Forum

Thread tagged as: Question, Configuration, Hosting

Duplicate A Site

Can someone tell me how I duplicate a whole existing site? I have a Perch based site already created, the client wants to rebrand the same site for another market but reuse the already existing content.

Obviously I can copy the site files and resource folders, the database etc. Is that all I need to do?

And I know I will need to amend the license data with a fresh licence!

Nigel Coath

Nigel Coath 1 points

  • 3 years ago
Drew McLellan

Drew McLellan 2638 points
Perch Support

Yes, that's all you need to do.

Thanks, its been a while since I had to do this!

I have managed to get my ISP to clone the existing site, have added the new license and because they cloned the database settings, its all linked, great!

However I just thought of a small potential issue. I need to change a few details, for example:

  1. Email/Address Details, Contact Form
  2. Colour Scheme
  3. Logo

Is there a way to make changes, without them affecting the other site? Is it a case of changing the names of any content IDs so they are unique?

Drew McLellan

Drew McLellan 2638 points
Perch Support

Do you mean for your site or in Perch?

For the front end content controlled by Perch I think I kind of figured it out.

I had to rename the regions that needed to be different in the templates for the second site, but its a bit tedious as I then had to recreate all the content and then make the changes.

The downside is both Admin areas show both regions which might be confusing to the editors. I tried taking away privileges but thats not too helpful as it applies to both sites. Maybe there is a better way to achieve this, it seems to work okay.

The way my ISP did it was to clone the entire original Perch based site and DB (and yes it does have a different license set in Config for the new site), the DB password and Perch login is the same for both sites.

Do you think that is okay?

Rachel Andrew

Rachel Andrew 394 points
Perch Support

A better solution would have been to duplicate the database, unless you do want changes to one to reflect on the other.

Unfortunately the client wanted the bulk of the content to be the same, but be able to make changes that affected both!

I figured out how to achieve this, but as the database is the same, the admin of both sites shows the same regions. For instance I have an Introduction region on most pages. For the second site I had to create a renamed version called "Site 2 Introduction" (paraphrased).

Trouble is both Admins show both regions on each page, a bit confusing.

So I thought why not hide them from "Editors"? Great except both Admin windows have the same users so they get hidden on both Admin portals.

I wonder if there is a better way to share the database, but keep the Admin users that access the site(s) separate? What I really need to do is have the same database used for both sites but have separate logins to the Admin. Is there a way to configure the Config file to do this?

Rachel Andrew

Rachel Andrew 394 points
Perch Support

No, because what you have is two sites sharing a database designed for one site, Perch isn't developed for multiple sites like that.

Is there a way to have separate users for both Admins though?

If the database was set up to be shared this way https://docs.grabaperch.com/perch/building/servers/multiple-server-config/ could I then edit each config file so that the admin user is different?

Or is there another way to share content between two Perch installs, much like there are shared regions in one site?

Drew McLellan

Drew McLellan 2638 points
Perch Support

There's no standardised way to do this - so we have no instructions to follow.

Okay thanks anyway, looks like I will have to stick with my solution (hack).