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Your Private Sandbox: How to Clone a WordPress Site to Your Local Computer in 5 Steps

ByKinga Maleszewska

Do you know that fear? You need to make an important change to a live client website. One small mistake, one faulty plugin update, and the entire site, viewed by hundreds or thousands of users, could go down. Working on a “live organism” is a huge source of stress and risk.

Fortunately, there’s a professional solution for this: creating a perfect 1:1 copy of the production site on your own computer. This is your private, safe sandbox where you can test, break, and fix things without any consequences.

In this guide, I will walk you through the entire cloning process, step by step. We’ll create a digital testing ground where you can work in peace. The whole process is based on recreating three key components of the site: the files, the theme, and the database.

Step 1: The Foundation – Your Local Environment (XAMPP + a Blank WordPress)

Before you start cloning, you need a “plot of land” on which to build the copy of the site. Our plot will be a local XAMPP server and a fresh WordPress installation.

  1. Start XAMPP: Open the XAMPP Control Panel and start the Apache and MySQL modules. They simulate a real server on your computer.

  2. Create an empty database: In your browser, go to http://localhost/phpmyadmin. In the panel, create a new database (e.g., named client_project) and jot down its name—you’ll need it in a moment.

  3. Install a clean WordPress:

    • Create a folder for your project in C:\xampp\htdocs\ (e.g., client-site).

    • Download the latest version of WordPress from the official site and extract its contents into the newly created folder.

    • In your browser, go to http://localhost/client-site and go through the famous 5-minute installation, providing the details for the empty database you just created.

Result of this step: You have a working, but completely empty, WordPress site at a local address. This is our clean foundation.

Step 2: The Assets – Files from the Server (FTP) 📂

Now we will download the site’s unique “assets”—the plugins it uses and all the uploaded media (images, documents).

  1. Connect to the server: Use an FTP client (like the free FileZilla) and the access credentials to connect to the production server.

  2. Find the site’s root directory: This is usually a folder named public_html or www.

  3. Download the key folders: You don’t need to download the entire WordPress core. We’re only interested in two folders that contain the site-specific files:

    • The entire wp-content/plugins folder

    • The entire wp-content/uploads folder

  4. Place the files locally: Paste the downloaded folders (plugins and uploads) into your local directory C:\xampp\htdocs\client-site\wp-content\, overwriting the existing, empty versions.

Step 3: The Heart of the Code – Cloning the Theme (Git) 👨‍💻

The theme is a key component, but instead of downloading it via FTP, we’ll use Git. Why? Because it ensures we are working on the exact same, up-to-date version of the code as the rest of the team, with its entire history of changes.

  1. Open your terminal: Launch your favorite terminal (e.g., Git Bash or the terminal integrated into VS Code).

  2. Navigate to the themes folder: Type the command to enter the themes directory in your local project:


cd C:\xampp\htdocs\client-site\wp-content\themes\
  1. Clone the repository: Use the git clone command with the theme’s repository URL:

git clone https://github.com/company-name/theme-name.git

Git will download the entire project and create a theme-name folder.

Step 4: The Soul of the Site – The Database Migration ❤️

This is the most important and magical step, which will transfer all the content—pages, posts, settings, and even users. We’ll use a brilliant plugin to make the process simple and error-free.

A) On the production site (online):

  1. Log in to the client’s WordPress admin panel.

  2. Install and activate the “All-in-One WP Migration” plugin.

  3. In the menu, go to All-in-One WP Migration -> Export.

  4. Click “Export To” and choose the “File” option.

  5. Wait for the plugin to package the entire site into one file, then download it. It will have a .wpress extension.

B) On your local site:

  1. Log in to the admin panel of your empty, local WordPress (http://localhost/client-site/wp-admin).

  2. Install and activate the “All-in-One WP Migration” plugin here as well.

  3. Go to All-in-One WP Migration -> Import.

  4. Drag and drop or select the .wpress file you downloaded earlier.

  5. The plugin will warn you that the import will overwrite your local site. Confirm with confidence—this is exactly what we want!

Step 5: The Grand Finale – The First Login 🔑

After the import is complete, two key things will happen. Attention, this is important!

  1. You will be automatically logged out of your local admin panel.

  2. You must log in again using the username and password from the production site, as the plugin also imported its users, and your old, local login credentials will no longer work.

After logging back in, the final step: go to Appearance -> Themes and activate the theme you cloned from GitHub.

Congratulations! Your local site at http://localhost/client-site is now a fully functional copy of the production site, ready for safe development work.

As you can see, this process, though it has several stages, is extremely logical and provides immense comfort. Having a local copy is the foundation of professional and stress-free work on web projects.

Have you managed to clone your site but want to take it a step further? Or perhaps you want to automate this process even more using scripts or Docker?

Contact me, and I’ll be happy to help you take your development workflow to the next level.

I invite you to get in touch

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