Using DO Droplet can I duplicate a Wordpress site for testing purposes?

Posted on March 24, 2019

I have an existing website hosted by a different company. I want to create a private Wordpress site in DO and copy my domain to this private site for testing. My question is can this be done? Not looking for a how to - just can it be done. If someone has already done something similar any lessons learned would be great.

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jarland

March 25, 2019

Greetings!

This can absolutely be done. The steps are going to vary based on where you’re coming from (shared hosting, for example, is a different process than a pure LAMP server). I know you said you weren’t asking for a how-to, but I just want to cover the high level points for this:

On the other side:

Export database
Prepare files for transfer (zip, make backup, whatever has to be done)

On this side:

Create droplet with LAMP configuration
Move your files from the other host to the web server’s document root
Import database

Then you need to change the Wordpress URL on the duplicate site. Otherwise it’ll redirect back to your production site when you visit it. Changing the host file on your system can change that, but you’ll be changing it back and forth to go between dev/prod, and that isn’t reasonable for most people. Some tips on changing the URL:

https://codex.wordpress.org/Changing_The_Site_URL

Jarland