If you manage a WordPress multisite network where you, as the admin, set up each site individually, there’s a new plugin that should save you quite a bit of time. NS Cloner – Site Copier gives multisite admins the ability to easily clone individual sites in your network within a matter of seconds.
The plugin, created by the folks at NeverSettle, is billed as “the easiest, fastest, and most user-friendly way you will ever create fully configured sites on your multisite networks.” It takes any existing site on your WordPress multisite network and clones it into a new site. The new site is an exact copy of the theme, theme settings, plugins, plugin configurations, content, images, videos and site settings.
So simple, a monkey could use it!
Despite how powerful it is, this WordPress multisite plugin is not complicated to use. As you can see from the settings page, it includes a dropdown for you to select the site to clone and then a field for the new site name and title.
Please be advised that the Site Copier plugin is currently only compatible with subdomain networks. However, the developer is in the process of adding support for subfolder-based networks. Also, because this plugin works with your database, you’ll want to make a backup before trying it out on a production site.
If you’re a developer who uses multisite to organize your clients’ websites, the Site Copier can save you time in configuring new websites. If you have a standard set of plugins, widget settings, theme settings, etc that you regularly implement, you can create a template that you can use over and over again, instead of manually configuring each site. It’s also useful for setting up design and development testing sites with multiple versions.
Can you believe that the Site Copier plugin is free? Download it from the WordPress plugin repository.
Other than being free, what would be the big differences between this and the New Blog Templates plugin?
Try Blog Copier!!!
The New Blog Templates plugin goes beyond in that it lets you set up a default template for new signups and gives you the option to allow template selection upon registration. http://premium.wpmudev.org/project/new-blog-template/
This might be great if it did subfolder multisite installs as well as subdomain configurations.
Excellent feedback – thanks! We just released NS Cloner 2.1.2 on wordpress.org that supports subdirectory installs! It will auto-detect your multiside mode and the same simple, fast, and easy copy process hasn’t changed. Enjoy!
Hi
I’m using “Add Cloned Sites for WPMU (batch)” from http://productbakery.com/wordpress/add-clone-sites-for-wpmu-batch/
Anybody have comments on this vs this new one?
We have a “master” in English and then create a clone for translation and localization. But I have problem when I want to do a search n replace on the master URL to the new domain URL.
When I read about NS cloner Pro the search looks good.. Any idea when the Pro version is released?
We just launched the Pro version. Maybe it can help you with your search and replace needs in the cloning process! Thanks for your interest – you can find out more about it here: http://neversettle.it/ns-cloner-pro/
I really like the possibilities with this. Our guys are working with this and checking it out and so far sounds like it is good to go. Leveraging technology is not always easy, but it seems almost too simple with this one. Nice work NS!
hi, i have a question.
Is it possible, with this plugin, to clone a main site?
When you use a network, there are many sub-blogs, and one of these is the main blog. I tried with this plugin, but in the first step, when i have to select the blog to clone, i don’t have the main one.
In the picture, here, i see the blog id, 1, for example.
Whan i tried, there was not the 1 id blog, the main blog.
Do you know what kind of problem is this?
thanks, and great post!!
Unfortunately that isn’t (yet) possible with the NS Cloner. That screenshot was from an early version, and we found that there are several critical differences in the database structure and file uploads structure between the way WordPress stores the main blog and the way it handles all sub-blogs. Adding support for main blog cloning is in our roadmap though! In the meantime, using a sub-blog as a template site is also a great solution because you can experiment with various approaches without worrying about impacting the main site (ID 1). Hope that helps.
Thank you very much!
The problem is that i have a blog with posts and videos and i need to clone it. It is a main blog in a network.
I want to clone it to a sub-blog, because i’m restyling the network, and i liked this plugin.
I tried many cloning blogs plugins, but i found the same problem, maybe my case is abnormal :)
Maybe i have to export contents, and import them into a new sub-blog, and set again theme and plugins.
I’m looking for a faster way, this is the problem.
That’s ok, tanks again