When creating a staging site or just a copy of your existing site for testing or basically any reason, there are a few rules we strongly encourage users to follow.

• Avoid Nesting: In order to avoid possible conflicts between your sites, it is important to separate your sites into completely separate folders. For example, if you have a production site and a staging site, the layout might look something like this where the public_html folder is your web server’s root path.
  /public_html/production_site/[wordpress site 1 file/folders here]
  /public_html/staging_site/[wordpress site 2 file/folders here]
• Separate Databases:You must create separate databases for each site. So you might create a database named prod_db for the production site and another database named stage_db for the staging site. Never try to use the database for both sites.
  • Note: Each staging, local, or dev site you activate Duplicator on counts toward your license’s site limit, the same as a production site would.
• For a full overview of a staging site, see the post How to Create a WordPress Staging Site.

Note: If you’re on Duplicator Pro or Elite, you don’t need to set this up manually at all, Duplicator’s built-in One-Click Staging feature handles folder separation and database creation automatically. The manual steps below are for Duplicator Lite users or anyone who prefers a manual setup.