How to copy a SiteStudio site

A question that pops up quite often how to copy a SiteStudio website, or maybe just a part of it. UCM is a content management system so by definition it tries to reuse content and prevent duplication! But there are situations where it is desirable to duplicate or replicate your site, like for a training demo or for backup purposes. There are a number of techniques to do this but surprisingly few people know how, or how do it really easily.

The best method for replicating site sections to another UCM instance is to use the SiteStudio Replicator application. This application can select individual website sections to replicate (or the whole lot.) It can also overwrite or retain the region content assignments on the target server, along with other section properties including custom section properties. A few simple clicks and the site structure is replicated. You don't need any firewall exceptions or UCM providers to connect the servers, you don't need to check in any content. Easy! It is already installed on your local machine alongside the SiteStudio Designer application, look for it in your Windows Start menu.

But we're still stuck on website duplication. There is an inherent problem here - website sections rely on unique section IDs - you can't simply duplicate a website, because you'll get duplicate website sections! If you really really need to duplicate a site or some site sections, download the project file xml and manually copy + change ALL the section IDs (append a letter to them all.) This is fraught with danger; the simplest mistake will cripple the entire website.

Other site replication methods include:

The Backup and Restore page basically downloads an entire site and all its config and bits and pieces and wraps it all up in a zip file. I suppose this is the cleanest way to backup a site but it doesn't duplicate a site. It has to be run manually and it creates a nasty big zip file. Not really useful unless you're doing a training demo and want to obliterate any changes when you import. It's in Content Server under the menu Administration > Site Studio Administration > Backup and restore.

The Manage Site Replication page uses the power of Archiver to replicate a site to another UCM instance with the benefit of running automatically as content changes. It can be configured to include the website content and/or the website structure (the project file which describes all the site sections.) The problem here is that it will replicate the entire site structure, which is typically not ideal. Most websites are constantly under development and require a planned launch, not an automatic deployment! It's best for synchronising content only, keep the project file out of it. It's in Content Server under the menu Administration > Site Studio Administration > Manage Site Replication.