WordPress MultiSite cloning plugins

WP-a2z.org – the Dynamic API Reference for WordPress – is a WordPress Multisite installation. sub-domains are used to hold the documentation for a selected plugin, theme or combinations thereof. Each time a new sub-domain is created we need to clone the contents of core.wp-a2z.org. We’ve used two different plugins to perform the cloning. Our current plugin of choice is multisite-cloner. Why? Because it’s the only one fast enough to complete the job.

Plugin name and description	Plugin links	Version, total downloads, last update, tested
Multisite Cloner When creating a new blog on WordPress Multisite, copies all the posts, settings and files, from a selected blog into the new one.	multisite-cloner	0.2.2.1 22735 2016-11-18 8:45pm GMT 4.6.12
NS Cloner – Site Copier The NS Cloner saves multisite admins and developers TONS of time by cloning existing sites…	ns-cloner-site-copier home	3.1.0 156682 2018-09-17 10:15am GMT 4.9.8
MultiSite Clone Duplicator Clones an existing site into a new one in a multisite installation : copies all posts, settings and files	multisite-clone-duplicator home	1.5.2 124761 2018-06-18 2:16pm GMT 4.9.8

Additional requirements

Creating a brand new site as a clone of an existing site is an easily satisfied requirement. But what if you’ve cloned a site, applied some updates to the clone and the original source and now want to merge the sites back again. There doesn’t didn’t appear to be a nice solution for this. But, since we had that requirement ourselves, we started developing it.

Update November 2014

oik-clone v0.1 was used to pull updated content from one site to another in a WordPress Multisite environment.

Update March and April 2015

• oik-clone v0.2 added a basic push capability
• Subsequently, 5 enhancements have been added in quick succession.
• v0.7 is now available for Alpha testing

We will still use multisite-cloner for brand new sites, but we’ll also add oik-clone for duplicating News, FAQs and other common content.