Duplicating a Craft Site

If you’ve got a Craft site you’d like to use as a starting point for a new Craft project, you can either clone the entire install including its content, or re-use the original site’s structure and configuration leaving it ready for fresh users and content.

Complete Clone #

To clone an entire site, you’ll need to copy its files and database and give it a new URL.

1. Create a database backup of the original site.
2. Create a new database for the cloned site, and import the backup you created in the previous step.
3. Copy the original project directory to a new one you’ll use for the cloned site.
4. Edit the cloned .env and config/general.php files to point to the new database and use the cloned project’s desired URL(s).
5. Configure your web server for the new site.

That’s it! You should have a fully-cloned project, content and all, ready at the new URL you set up.

Structure Only #

Craft 3.1.0 and higher use project config to store configuration in YAML files. Craft can sync this YAML to replicate the entire project configuration in a new environment—including a fresh Craft install using the same version—without any need for a database dump.

1. Make sure Craft and your plugins are all up to date for the original project.
2. In the original site’s control panel, go to Utilities → Project Config and press Rebuild. (You can alternatively use php craft project-config/rebuild from your terminal.)
3. Create a new database for the cloned site.
4. Copy the original project directory to a new one you’ll use for the cloned site. If you’d rather be more selective, at minimum copy composer.json, composer.lock, config/project/*, craft, web/index.php, .env, and .env.example.
5. Edit the cloned .env and config/general.php files to point to the new database and use the cloned project’s desired URL(s).
6. Run composer install (not composer update!) for the new site.
7. Configure your web server for the new site.
8. In your terminal, run php craft setup and follow the prompts to create an admin account and configure basic site settings. Your project config YAML will automatically be applied toward the end of the install process:

    (...)
        > applying existing project config ... done
        > saving the first user ... done
     *** installed Craft successfully (time: 8s)
   

Your cloned site should be all ready for new content.