Sometimes, our supporters may ask you to provide them with a copy of your site. They will do this when issues you are reporting need to be investigated in greater detail. Using a copy of your site is the safest and most convenient way to debug problems.

There are multiple WordPress plugins that allow you to create a copy of your website, but we usually recommend the free Duplicator plugin.

The Duplicator plugin creates a snapshot of your site and packs it into only two files that you can then share with our supporter team. Since the created files may be big, for sharing purposes, you could use services like DropBox and Google Drive among others.

To ensure the privacy and security of your data our supporter team deletes all local copies of your site, once the issue is resolved. You can read more about this on our page about privacy and security policies regarding providing support information for support.

Creating a copy of your site

As a precaution, be sure to take a complete backup of your site and database first before proceeding!

1. Create an administrator account for the supporter

This ensures that the supporter will have a way of logging into the site after installing it. You can delete this account once the snapshot has been built.

2. Install the Duplicator plugin

The Duplicator plugin is free and can be downloaded from the WordPress repository.

3. Create the support package with the copy of your site

Once the Duplicator plugin is installed and activated, you will see it in the main WordPress menu. Follow these steps to create a package:

  1. Click Duplicator in the main WordPress menu.
  2. Click Create New to start setting up the package.
  3. You can use the Name field to rename the package, or leave the default value.
  4. Click Next and the plugin will perform a scan of your site. Please note that depending on the size of your site, this could take some time.
  5. When the scan is complete you will be presented with an overview of the scan results. Click Build to start the package building process. Again, this process can take some time to complete.
  6. After the package is built, you will be presented with two buttons, Installer and Archive. Click both. The first will download the installer.php file and the second will download a zip file containing the actual package.

4. Share both files with the supporter

Please share both of these files with our support team. You may use any file sharing service that you prefer. For example, you can upload Installer and Archive to Google Drive, make the folder viewable for all and send us the link to it.