Site copies are a way of creating or migrating content from one site to another. Sitekit site copies work as follows in the order the site copy script runs

1. Licence – site licence is inserted
2. Domain – one value is inserted - being what you entered as the domain for the new site. See item 18 for v9 sites.
3. Site Settings – some values are copied and others are set from the product licence (number of pages, images, domains, forms, users etc)
4. Site Security Settings – default row inserted with siteid
5. Variable Blocks – copied from copy-from site – all default and default lang variations – no schemes (branch/domain dependent) or scheme variations copied
6. Variables – copied from copy-from site – all default and default lang variations – no schemes (branch/domain dependent) or scheme variations copied
7. Language Settings - If new site is multilingual (note - needed for single language site where language is not English) row inserted in siteKitSiteLanguageSettings table. Default language set to the default language of the copy-form site.
8. Sitekit Module (and API) Rights – all values are set from the product licence
9. Reseller panel - If the user is a reseller then the site is added to their reseller panel
10. User Groups – copied from copy-from site. Users are not copied.
11. Asset Classes – copied from copy-from site
12. Asset Class Group Rights – copied from copy-from site. Rewired to use the new groupID and new Asset class IDs above.
13. Assets: Pages – copied from copy-from site. Properties and content copied from the live table to the live and non-live tables. All non-editorial pages (except enquiry form pages) are converted to plain editorial pages. Rewired to use new Asset Class IDs. Links added to pages and variable blocks sometimes are stored internally using the shortcut id. At the end of the copy process there is a find and replace script which converts the shorcutid in links to the new shortcutid in body fields (live and non-live tables) and global variable blocks.
14. Assets: Images - copied from copy-from site. Images in image placeholders in content layouts are rewired to use the new image ids.
15. Assets: Files - copied from copy-from site. Files (Downloads) Asset Lists are rewired to use the new fields. File names and paths are preserved.
16. Assets: Templates – There is a web config key (“SiteCopy_CopyTemplates”) which if set to true will mean templates are copied. If copied then pages will be rewired to use the new template ids. Site settings are rewired to use the new template ids for site layout, site style sheet etc.
17. Navigation - copied from copy-from site. Only pages in the site default language are included.
18. Shared Assets - Any folders (e.g. templates) that the copy-from site is sharing – the new site is given access to. Additionally any shared folder that the copy-from site has access to is given to new site (this will include a global templates share if the copy-from site has it). If copying sites from one sitekit database to another distinct one then shared assets will not be included in the copy as the sites involved will not be in the same installation.
19. Set Domain root folder and start page - the home-page in the default language is set as the start page and the root folder set as the domain folder for the domain name.
20. Forms - copied from copy-from site. Includes SiteKitFormConfiguration and SiteKitFormConfigurationElements but not the submissions or aggregates submissions or submission elements. Forms pages are re-wired to use the new form id.
21. Asset lists – File and Page (but not External Link – because we didn’t copy the links library links) asset lists copied from copy-from site. Re-wired to use the new shorcutids of files (downloads) and internal pages. Pages are rewired to use the new asset list ids.
22. Script manager elements.
23. Post types
24. Data islands as configured on the revised data islands system
25. Work flow

Site copy known issues

Sitekit sites are complex things – and although the site copy is getting more complex there are still many things that it does not do. If it's not explicitly mentioned in the list above then it doesn't get done, the more obvious exclusions and issues are below. This is not an exhaustive list.

1. Forms are copied and Pages with a content type of form are copied and rewired to use the new id of the copied form. Embedded forms – using XML sniplets will be unchanged and will have the wrong form id (although the form will have been copied).
2. Other non-editorial content types are converted to editorial pages so they will no longer work as intended. Also the modules they refer to will not have been copied – e.g. forums, guestbook etc. Likewise any XML sniplets utilising these modules will be broken.
3. Links (Links library) are not copied over and neither are “External Links” asset lists.
4. Domains are not copied over (apart from the domain name entered) nor any domain related info.
5. Variable schemes and variables and variable blocks using those schemes are not copied, default variable are.
6. Users are not copied (though user groups are).
7. Mailing Lists, Guest books, Forums, News Modules, FAQs, Events modules, Directory, statistics, audit trail are not copied.
8. Metadata schemes are not copied though the metadata itself is.
9. Any calls to images using getimage.aspx will have the wrong id – apart from those in image placeholders in content layouts.
10. Any absolutely addressed images and files – i.e. where the path includes the domain name – will still be pulling from the copy-from site.

Other Copy Features

It is possible to copy a site from a different Sitekit installation (a different database). In order to do this you will need to enter the siteid and connection string for the remote copy-from database in the appropriate fields in the create new site form.

Note:

1. The servers should be running the same version of Sitekit or else db schema differences could lead to the code breaking.
2. The server where the new site is created may not have templates and images referred to in pages and therefore may be broken initially. E.g. global templates and shared templates and images may not exist.