WP Site Replicator

Quickly create replicas of large production websites from WordPress eXtended RSS (WXR) export files.

This command relies on writing directly to the WP database via WP DB API so both post and term tables should be empty.

Install

Install it as a WP CLI package:

wp package install wpsh/wp-cli-replicator

Usage

Export Content

Export content from the source site:

1. Use the WordPress Importer plugin or the wp export command to export the site content.

2. Use the WP Options Importer plugin to export the site options. The output should be a single options.json file.

Prepare Import

1. Parse the exported WordPress eXtended RSS or WXR into JSON files for site users, terms and posts:

   wp replicator parse-wxr path/to/wxr/directory
   

   where path/to/wxr/directory is the path to the directory with all the XML files.

   All XML files path/to/wxr/files/*.xml are parsed and stored in the path/to/wxr/directory/json directory -- users.json, terms.json and posts-*.json.

Import Content

Please note that you may need to specify --url for all commands if you're running WordPress multisite.

1. Empty the site content where you want to import the content:

   wp site empty --yes
   

2. Import options:

   wp replicator import-options "path/to/options.json"
   

   where path/to/options.json is the path to the exported options.

3. Import users:

   wp replicator import-users "path/to/users.json"
   

   where path/to/users.json is the path the user list generated from the XML export.

   All existing users with the same login name will be deleted and new users created with a random password because WordPress export doesn't include the passwords. All users will need to reset their passwords. Use wp user update USERNAME --user_pass="YOURNEWPASSWORD" to update a password for a specific user.

4. Import taxonomies and terms:

   wp replicator import-terms "path/to/terms.json"
   

   where path/to/terms.json is the path the term list generated from the XML export.

5. Import posts:

   wp replicator import-posts "path/to/json"
   

   where path/to/json is the path to the directory with all post-*.json files.

Credits

Created by Kaspars Dambis.