Thirteen copies of one PHP application onto new hosts and subdomains

A client running a set of regional listing sites needed the same PHP backend and its database copied onto new hosting accounts and new subdomains, thirteen times in six months, with the source left untouched every time.

The objective

The client operates several regional listing sites that all run the same application. Each new region means another copy of the backend and its database, sometimes on a new hosting account and sometimes on a new subdomain of one they already had.

A copy like that isn't a file transfer. The application holds its own address in several places, so every reference has to be changed or the copy quietly points back at the site it came from.

One instruction was repeated on every order, in capitals: do not alter or delete the source. These were live sites earning money.

What I did

I copied the application files and the database for each request, then went through the stored references to the old address and changed them to the new one.

I left the source installation untouched every time, including when the target was a subdomain of the same account and moving would have been quicker than copying.

I installed outside the account's main web folder where that was the right structure, so a copy stays isolated from the primary domain rather than being served underneath it.

And I turned several of them around inside a day when the client needed one urgently, and carried a transfer over from a previous order rather than charging for it twice.

The result

Thirteen orders between October 2020 and April 2021, each one a copy of the same application into a new home, with every source site still running.