Written by Admin on 2025-05-06

How to Download a WordPress Website as Clone

WordPress is an incredibly powerful platform for building websites, and many users find themselves wanting to make a copy of their site for various reasons. Maybe you want to move your website to a different hosting provider, or perhaps you want to create a test environment to make changes before deploying them to your live site.

Whatever your reasons may be, downloading your WordPress website as a clone can be a simple and effective way to achieve your goals. In this article, we will explain how to do this step-by-step using the plugin Duplicator.

Step 1: Install Duplicator plugin

The first step is to install the Duplicator plugin on your WordPress website. To do this, go to your WordPress dashboard and navigate to 'Plugins' > 'Add New'. In the search bar, type 'Duplicator' and hit enter. From the list of results, click 'Install Now' next to the Duplicator plugin, then activate it.

Step 2: Create a package

Once Duplicator is installed, you can create a package of your website. Go to 'Duplicator' in your WordPress dashboard and click 'Packages'. Here you can click 'Create New', then give your package a name and hit 'Next'.

Duplicator will now scan your website and create a list of all the files that need to be included in the package. If everything looks good, hit 'Build'.

Step 3: Download the package

Once Duplicator has finished building the package, you can download it to your computer. Click the 'One-Click Download' button to download the installer.php and the archive file.

Make sure to keep these files together in the same folder on your computer. You will need them both in the next step.

Step 4: Upload the package to a new environment

To use your clone, you'll need to upload it to a new environment. This could be a new hosting provider, a local server, or a staging site.

Move the installer.php and archive file to the new environment and open your browser. Navigate to the URL where you uploaded these files and add '/installer.php' to the end of the URL. For example, if you uploaded the files to 'example.com', your URL should look like 'example.com/installer.php'.

Step 5: Run the installation wizard

The next step is to run the installation wizard. Follow the prompts to complete the installation. You'll need to specify the database credentials of the new environment, give your website a name, and create a username and password.

Once the installation is complete, you'll be redirected to your new site where you can see your clone in action.

Congratulations, you have successfully downloaded your WordPress website as a clone using Duplicator! You can use this technique to move your website to a new hosting provider, create a test environment, or simply make a backup of your site.