The benefits of duplicating websites
One of the key benefits of being able to easily duplicate WordPress websites is the ability to create staging environments. By duplicating a website, you can create a clone of the original site to test changes and updates in a safe and isolated environment. This allows you to experiment with different configurations, plugins, and themes without impacting the live site. Let’s see how easy this process is with ServPress.
Step 1: Choose the website to duplicate
Once you’ve chosen what website you want to duplicate, click on the “Three dots” at the right, which is the “More actions” menu, and click on Duplicate.
Step 2: Write where to duplicate the website
Now you just have to type where you want to duplicate the website. This can be a subdomain, or another domain entirely.
By default, it’ll be like you are importing the website as brand new into ServPress. You can also choose if you want to copy website’s settings to save time.
In case you attempt to duplicate a website to a domain that already exists on your server, a confirmation message will appear to avoid unintended errors. If you choose to overwrite it, ServPress will move the website’s information to another folder, while preserving the database, so no data will be lost. However, if you wish to conduct the duplication process cleanly, it is recommended to remove the destination domain beforehand to prevent the confirmation message from appearing.
Then, just click on the Duplicate button and your website will be duplicated!
Things to consider after duplicating a website
- Be careful with SEO: To maintain your website’s SEO, it’s important to consider the impact of SEO plugins when duplicating a website. Leaving these plugins active on the duplicated site can result in competition with the original, potentially damaging your SEO. To avoid this, we recommend disabling any SEO plugins installed on the duplicated site and enabling a maintenance plugin that restricts access to only logged-in users. This way, you can make any necessary changes to the duplicated site without affecting your search engine rankings.
- Licenses might not apply: It’s important to note that certain premium themes/plugins have domain-specific restrictions that could impact a perfect duplicate of a website. In such cases, the duplicate website might not function as expected due to these restrictions. To avoid any issues with your theme/plugin licenses, we recommend that you check with your plugin providers before duplicating your website.
- Domain replacements: When duplicating a website, ServPress edits the database by replacing all instances of the original website with the new one. However, this can result in unintended replacements. For example, if there is any configuration that refers to the original domain, such as an email address, it may be replaced with the new one. It is important to carefully review the duplicated website and check for any discrepancies that may have occurred during the process.