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Create a clone or "staging" site for your Joomla website

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Written by Marco Conti Thursday, 10 September 2009 13:01

Over the many years I have been working with Joomla! I have found that creating a "clone" (or more than one sometimes) of the main web site I am working on is a very useful tool in a Joomla developer bag of tricks. If you are using Cpanel as your main hosting control panel, this process is very fast and easy to implement.

A "staging" are on the server is very useful not only for you, the developer, but often clients will find it very handy for training and experimentation. The major advantage for them is that no matter their level, they won't screw up the main site no matter what they do.

Here is how it is done:

Go to Cpanel and open the file manager
Go to public_html and create a new folder called "staging" or whatever you want.
Select all the Joomla files and folders (making sure not to select any folders files that do not belong, such a cgi-bin or similar ) refer to a clean install of Joomla to recognize the files/folders)
Click on "Copy" in the toolbar above and choose the public_html/staging folder as the destination. Now the files will be copied to the staging folder
Next go and create a new database in the Cpanel DB manager
Assign the DB to the same user as the main site and give it the same privileges
Go to PhpMyAdmin (PMA) and select the DB of the main site.
Click on export
Save the exported DB to disk (choose gzip compression)
Now switch in PMA and choose the new DB. It will be empty.
In PMA click on "Import" and choose the same DB you just saved to disk. Upload it.
Now go to the file manager again. Navigate to the staging folder.
Select "configuration.php" and click on the "edit" icon
In configuration.php you have to change these lines:

- var $log_path = '/account/public_html/logs';
- var $tmp_path = '/account/public_html/tmp';
- var $db = 'dbname';
- var $password = 'password';(* Only if you changed the user as well)
- var $user = 'username';(* see above)
- var $ftp_root = ' ';

Now save and close.

The staging site should be working in its own folder independently of the main website, bit all user accounts and everything else should be identical to the main site.

NOTES:

If you are using Virtuemart or some other add-on scripts, they often have their own configuration file. In that case you have to make sure that you change that config file "path" as well. For instance, in Virtuemart, under "Configuration ==> Site there is a URL for both regular and HTTPS connections. That will remain with the old URL and you need to change it by adding /staging/ at the end. That's not always possible and you may have to do it in the file itself:

administrator/components/com_virtuemart/virtuemart.cfg.php

Remember the trailing slash or all sorts of funky things will happen.