How do you copy a WordPress site for testing?

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  thekatelab · Member · Oct 14, 2014 at 2:59 pm

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  I want to make some edits to my wordpress site, how do I copy it to do testing so it doesn’t mess up the whole site?

  The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

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  lizthefair · Member · Oct 14, 2014 at 6:35 pm

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  Here’s how you create a test site.

  Create a new site by clicking the blue button on the left side of this page:
  https://wordpress.com/sites. Be sure to give the new site a name that you won’t easily confuse with your real site.

  Change the theme of your new test site to match the theme on your current site.

  Export the content from your real site by following these instructions: http://en.support.wordpress.com/export/ Note: this process just makes a copy of your content, it won’t erase anything from your real site.

  Import the contents of the export file into your test site by following these instructions: http://en.support.wordpress.com/import/

  Now you have a test site!

  Note: You’ll have to set up your widgets and headers again from scratch, and the test site won’t have any of the upgrades from your real site so if you need to test css* this won’t work.

  There also isn’t an easy way to port your changes back into your real site, so once you make sure you know what changes you want to make you’ll have to do them again “for real” on main site.

  *If you need to test css or other custom design settings, you can do that from your customizer menu. You can preview the changes as you make them, but they don’t go live until you click “save”

  Hope that helps! If any of that was confusing, or you run into problems, let me know.