Multisite Cloner Plugin

In WordPress Multisite, new sites get a boring default template, without any custom settings or starter content.

This plugin allows you to select a specific blog on your network, a “master” one, that will be cloned every time a new blog is created.

In this way, new blogs will contain all posts, uploads, theme settings and plugin options from the master blog.

How does it work?

1. It uses MySQL INSERT INTO ... SELECT to copy every table from the “master” blog into the new one. This is fast!
2. Then it does a search and replace on the new blog’s tables, to replace the old URL with the new one.
   This is done in a way that respects serialized arrays, so your plugin’s settings will be preserved.
   (We used a heavily trimmed down version of Interconnect/IT’s Search and Replace tool for that, so go thank them for this!)
3. It proceeds to copy all files from the wp-content/uploads dir of your master blog into the new one’s, so that all assets will work as expected.
4. Finally it does some house clean-up, updating the new blog’s title, admin email, and user roles as needed.

Go check the screenshots, it’s really simple and does what it says.
Give it a try!

This plugin was handcrafted with love and ‘yerba mate’ by the team at Tipit.net.

1. Upload multisite-cloner to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory
2. Network-activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in your Network admin.
3. In your Network admin, go to Settings > Multisite Cloner

You’ll probably want to create a “master” blog to clone from, if you don’t have one already.

1. 

   Select a default site. It will be cloned when any new site is created.

2. 

   Clone any site. From the Sites list, admins can easily clone any site in the Network.

Can I clone the main site?

No. The main site in your network (usually the one with ID = 1) contains many DB tables, assets and even sensitive information that shouldn’t be replicated to other blogs.

Can I clone my blog in a single-site WP install?

No. The whole point of this plugin is to clone blogs within a Multisite network.

Really?

We couldn’t come up with more questions. Go ahead and ask us some questions and we’ll add the frequent ones here 🙂

0.2.2.1

• Fixed syntax error introduced in 0.2.2. (Props to @infotexsupport for reporting this.)
• Settings dropdown: include site path, set max-width.

0.2.2

• WP 4.6 compat: use get_sites and get_network. (Props to @dima-stefantsov for reporting this.)
• Fixed a bug with unserialized object cloning (Props to @icryptic, @techiechic, @t2m and @dberdal for reporting it, and thanks to @interconnectit for the actual fix!)

0.2.1

• Bug fix: when “Allow new registrations” is enabled and a user activates a new blog from the front-end, the wrong footer would be displayed on wp-activate.php. Thanks to Schalk Joubert who insisted on this bug.
• Minor UI tweaks to Settings
• Tested and updated WP version support.

0.2.0

• New feature: optionally clone users from the master blog. As suggested by @wppower.

0.1.13

• Disable cloning of the Main blog from the All Sites network admin.

0.1.12

• This plugin now works on an install path that includes numbers (avoid collisions with blogs ids), and supports HTTPS blogs too.

0.1.11.1

• Fixes minor problem with the clone recursive copy function

0.1.11

• Fixes problem with non-existents dirs

0.1.10

• This version works with the latest WordPress release (WordPress 4.0.0)

0.1.9

• Bug fix: Images in post were linked to the original blog.

0.1.8

• Minor fix to avoid PHP warning if target directories already exist (Fixes warning when creating new site reported by mr.gengu and beda69).

0.1.7.1

• Minor typo fix (Fixes error on network activation reported by ammienoot)

0.1.7

• The plugin now works on directory-based installs (Fixes problem with duplicate file path reported by JigMedia)
• Handle case of new networks that still haven’t created any sites to clone from.

0.1.6

• Fixes user roles error on installs with a non-default db prefix. (Fixes problem with user roles after cloning reported by B_Dark)

0.1.5

• Independence of the uploads directory structure. (Fixes warning after creating subdomain site reported by Pradip Nichite)

0.1.4

• First public release.
• Disabled cloning of the main site in the network. Risky stuff.
• Added “Dolly The Cloner” graphic by rock-star designer Diana Stilinovic.

0.1.3

• Added settings page.
• Added shortcut to clone any blog in the network.
• Refactored into a plugin class.
• Refactored DB replacer to use wpdb functions instead of obsolete mysql_* calls.

0.1.2

• Replaced calls to functionality in the underlying OS (mysql, sed) with raw SQL, for greater portability.

0.1.1

• Initial version, on a client site.