Clone a WordPress website for testing

Prepare a separate destination

Cloning copies website files and the database into another installation. It requires disk space and may also copy customer data and external service credentials. Confirm that Clone is available in your service's WP Toolkit.

Back up the source website. Choose a separate test subdomain or empty path that is not used in production. Do not select a live website's directory as the destination.

Clone the site

1. Open WP Toolkit in cPanel and locate the original site card.
2. Select Clone.
3. Check the destination domain, path and new database name. They must identify a separate installation.
4. Select Start and wait for completion. Do not accept an overwrite prompt unless you specifically intend to replace the destination.
5. Open the new site card and check the copy's address and WordPress dashboard.

Protect the test copy

Enable Password protection when available. Also discourage search indexing, but remember that an indexing request is not access control.

Disable real payments, customer emails, scheduled actions and outgoing webhooks in the copy before testing. Check that plugins use test credentials and that the copy does not write to the original database or external production systems.

Verify isolation

Make a small visible test change in the copy and confirm it does not appear on the original site. Check images and links too. Cloning does not automatically publish subsequent changes to the original website; that requires a separate, deliberate publishing operation.