Cloning Site: What to do on network, domain, dns, etc.

Try this Plugin https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/wp-clone-by-wp-academy/

Thanks! I am trying to understand the undelying “networking” issues and “how to do it”. I want to learn….Make sense?

You can install this plugin to your existing site and create a backup of the website . It would give you a backup file URL .

Now you need to install same plugin to new installation on different domain as you have mentioned .

Just go to plugin setting and restore the backup By the backup URL . It would setup same site on your new domain with same Username and Password but the website URL would be new domain URL.

So the underlying “networking issues” really have to do with the domain name. Your WordPress install in a way is tied to your domain name, especially throughout your database entries.

This means to “clone” your site, you first have to setup the proper server DNS entries, and document root for the cloned site. I am not familiar with your current hosting enviroment, but usually this goes like this:

Create a domain/subdomain DNS entry at your host with a document root that is separate from your current site to clone in to. There you can just copy your site files from your main document root, to this new document root.

Then you will need to make a copy of your database. Again, not being famialar with your current database hosting, this will vary, but generally you will want to export your current live database to a .sql file. Then create a new database on your server, give the appropriate permissions to the database, then re-import that database from the .sql file you just created.

Then comes the edits to your wp-config.php file to connect to the new database, and re-associate WordPress with your new domain. So first find your database entries, and update them with the appropriate new database you just created. These entires should look like the following in the wp-config.php file:

define('DB_NAME', 'database_name_here');
define('DB_USER', 'username_here');
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'password_here');
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');

Once you have those updated to match your new database, directly above the line in wp-config.php “/* That’s all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */” Like so:

define('RELOCATE',true);

/* That's all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */

Then you will need to check with your current host, and namecheap on how to point your new domain to the host. There are several ways to do this, and I would need to know more about your host setup, and where your domains current nameservers are pointed!

Happy to help more with this if you need it! Feel free to DM me.

@crimvo – Wow. Wow! That is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks so much.

I just really wanted to understand the general process. Like I said, I am not that familiar with WorPress but the current owner (who we are trying to assist) insists that his current site is locked to the domain.

From your reply, that may technically but true but your post also seems to indicate that it is not really that hard to unlock it and move the current site (clone, copy, …) to a new site.

We are going to get a local WordPress person to help us but I wanted to confirm it was not that hard (I did not think it was). WordPress is too popular and widely used for it to be that hard. The local expert thinks it is a couple of hours worth of work.

I know you (and the expert) have not seen the site setup we have but in general, we should be able to do this (especially with a WP expert doing it). Is that a fair statement?

Many thanks again for taking the time to answer my question – it is a big help.

Glad I could help clear that up some. To answer your question though, yes you and your expert should have no trouble doing this. This is very doable, and there are more than one way to do it to. So if your expert has a way he is more comfortable with, more than likely it should still work if he knows what he is doing!

Good luck!