How to Clone your Production WordPress Site to Staging

When you need to make any major or minor changes to your production website, it’s always a good idea to use a staging environment. This allows you to work in a safe space and edit content without altering your live website until you’re satisfied that they’re good enough for your customers. Follow these instructions to clone your live website to a BoldGrid Cloud WordPress staging site.

Create a new Cloud Staging Snap

1. Log into BoldGrid Central and navigate to Cloud WordPress.
2. Click on My Snaps.
3. Search for your theme, or use the Custom URL option if your theme is not available from the WordPress Repository, then click Continue.
4. Select all of your plugins, as well as Total Upkeep, then click Next Step.
5. Save your Snap and give it a name, for example, mywebsitedomain.com Snap.
6. You can now re-use this Snap any time you need to create a new WordPress Staging site.

Create a backup of Your Database and Content

1. Log into your WordPress Dashboard on your live site.
2. Install the Total Upkeep Plugin if you haven’t already done so.
3. Navigate to Total Upkeep -> Backup Archives.
4. Click on Backup Site Now.
5. Underneath Files and Folders, choose Custom Backup.
6. In the Include field, enter:

    /wp-content

7. Underneath Database, choose Backup all tables, then click Backup Site Now.
8. Once the backup completes, click view details -> Get Download Link and copy the URL to your clipboard.

Clone your Website to Staging

1. Log into your BoldGrid Cloud WordPress Dashboard that you created in the first section, and navigate to Total Upkeep -> Backup Archives -> Upload Backup.
2. Paste the URL into the Download URL Address field, and then click Upload.
3. Once the upload is complete, click view details and then Restore.

Congratulations! You now know how to clone a WordPress site to your staging website on BoldGrid Cloud WordPress. For the next steps, check out Making your WordPress Staging Website Live.