Introduction

Are you looking to expand your knowledge about the features of Softaculous included with your web hosting account’s cPanel? Want to find an easy way to copy your website’s contents with minimal effort and no technical know-how needed? Well, have no fear because that’s all easily achievable.

In this HostArmada tutorial, we will be providing you with the necessary steps for you to take to clone a WordPress website to another domain or subdomain on your HostArmada web hosting service.

How do you clone your WordPress website via Softaculous?

Let’s help you out. All you do to get it done is to follow these steps!

If you have cPanel and you used Softaculous to install WordPress, cloning a WordPress site couldn’t be easier.

(If you have access to Softaculous but didn’t use it to install WordPress, you can still import your existing WordPress installation into Softaculous.)

Step 1. Please access your cPanel and then locate the Softaculous Apps installer tab inside it. Click on it to proceed.

If you are having issues with accessing your cPanel, you can check this HostArmada tutorial out.

Step 2. Click on the “Installations” tab to move forwards.

Step 3. From the list of your installed applications, click the “Clone” icon next to the WordPress website that you’d like to clone.

Step 4. Once clicked, the system will bring you to the Clone Installation page. You will need to fill out the details of where you want your clone to go from here.

Here is a breakdown:

Choose Installation URL: This is the WordPress installation that Softaculous will clone.
Choose Protocol: You can choose HTTP or HTTPS, with or without www. Choose whatever matches the live site.
Choose Domain: If you have multiple domains, choose the same domain as the live site. You can also select a subdomain if you have one set up.
In Directory: Enter the directory’s name where you want the clone site to be set up. If the directory doesn’t exist, it will be created automatically.
Database Name: You can leave whatever default value is entered here unless you have a specific need to name the database a certain way.

Two additional options will appear which are not mandatory, but you can use them either way.

Disable Search Engine Visibility: If checked, then this shall discourage search engines from indexing this site. It is up to search engines to honor this request. You can change this later from the WordPress admin panel -> Settings -> Reading page.

Site Name: Enter the Site Name for the cloned website. If you want to use the same site name as the source website, leave this field blank.

Step 5. Click on “Clone Installation” to finalize the process. That’s it!

When Should You Clone a WordPress Site?

It’s all relatively simple. When a website is cloned, you have an exact copy of the images, content, plugins, and everything else, all duplicated perfectly. The cloned site will operate precisely like the original, with the exception of the domain name.

There are times when you may want to have a test copy of your WordPress website on hand. Or you would like to move your website from one folder to another. Doing either of these can be very involved with such things as copying files, databases, changing configurations, etc.

Luckily, the Softaculous Apps Installer has a clone feature that makes this all the much more straightforward. Since it leaves the original website in place, keeping it untouched, there’s no hassle at all.

You can also just clone your website in order to use it as a test environment, also known as a staging environment, and then delete it when you are finished. Bear in mind that there is another tutorial that we have about staging that you can check out here!

Conclusion

We are glad to have offered some assistance and clarification on this matter. It can come quite in handy to know how to clone your Wordpress installation.

If you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions, please feel free to reach us anytime. HostArmada remains ready to be deployed 24/7!