Website Cloning, Migration & Recovery Glossary

301 redirect

A permanent redirect from one URL to another. It passes almost all ranking signal to the new URL and is the correct choice when pages move during a migration.

302 redirect

A temporary redirect. It tells search engines the move is not permanent, so ranking signal is not fully transferred, using it for a permanent move can cost rankings.

ACF

Advanced Custom Fields, a WordPress plugin for adding structured, editable content fields to pages and post types without code.

Canonical tag

An HTML tag (rel="canonical") that tells search engines which URL is the authoritative version of a page, used to prevent duplicate-content confusion.

CDX API

The Internet Archive's index interface that lists every capture of a URL or domain with timestamps and status codes. Restoration work starts with a CDX query: it tells you what exists before you fetch a single page.

CLS

Cumulative Layout Shift, a measure of how much a page unexpectedly moves while loading. Lower is better; near zero is the goal.

CMS

Content Management System, software (such as WordPress) that lets you create and edit website content without writing code.

Content Security Policy (CSP)

An HTTP header that whitelists where a page may load scripts, styles and other resources from. The strongest browser-side defence against injected scripts, and one of the six headers standard security graders check.

Core Web Vitals

Google's set of user-experience metrics, loading (LCP), interactivity and visual stability (CLS), that influence search rankings.

Crawl budget

The number of pages a search engine will fetch from your site in a given period. Redirect chains, duplicate URLs and error pages waste it; clean structure spends it on pages that matter.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

A Core Web Vital measuring how much the page jumps around while loading. Caused by images without dimensions and late-injected banners; fixed by reserving space for everything up front.

Custom post type

A WordPress content type beyond the default posts and pages, for example "case studies" or "products", used to model structured content.

DMCA takedown

A formal notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act requesting removal of infringing content. The main legal tool against sites that copy yours without permission.

DNS

Domain Name System, the internet's address book that maps your domain to the server hosting your site. Migrations finish with a DNS switch to the new server.

DNS propagation

The lag while updated domain records spread across resolvers worldwide, typically minutes to 48 hours. Launches are planned around it: lower the TTL in advance and the switch becomes near-instant.

Domain redemption period

The stage after a domain expires when the original owner can still reclaim it for a recovery fee, usually about 30 days after the grace period. The last cheap exit before auctions and drop-catchers.

Drop-catching

Automated instant registration of domains the moment they are released after expiry. The reason an expired domain is usually gone within seconds of deletion, and why redemption fees are worth paying.

Duplicate content

Substantially identical content available at more than one URL. Search engines pick one version to rank; canonical tags and redirects control which.

Favicon

The small icon browsers show in tabs and bookmarks, and Google shows next to mobile results. A missing favicon is harmless technically and terrible for perceived legitimacy.

FTP/SFTP

File transfer protocols for moving site files to and from a server. SFTP is the encrypted variant; if your host still offers only plain FTP, that is a signal about the host.

Googlebot

Google's crawler. Some hacks serve clean pages to humans and spam to Googlebot specifically (cloaking), which is why a site can look fine while Search Console reports it hacked.

Headless CMS

A content system that stores and delivers content via an API, leaving the front-end presentation to a separate application.

Hreflang

An HTML annotation that tells search engines which language and region a page targets, used to connect equivalent pages across multilingual or multi-country sites.

HSTS (Strict-Transport-Security)

A response header telling browsers to always use HTTPS for your domain, closing the window where a first request over HTTP can be intercepted. Part of any A-grade header set.

HTTrack

A long-standing free tool that downloads static websites for offline viewing. It cannot execute modern JavaScript or capture server-side features.

Interaction to Next Paint (INP)

The Core Web Vital that replaced FID in 2024: how fast the page responds to clicks and keystrokes across the whole visit. Punishes JavaScript-heavy builder output more than any other metric.

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

The Core Web Vital measuring when the biggest visible element finishes rendering, effectively "when the page feels loaded". Good scores start with lightweight markup and properly sized hero images.

Lazy loading

Deferring offscreen images and embeds until the user scrolls near them. Correct lazy loading speeds pages up; lazy-loading the hero image is a classic self-inflicted LCP wound.

LCP

Largest Contentful Paint, the time it takes for the largest visible element to load. A key Core Web Vital; under 2.5 seconds is considered good.

Liquid

Shopify's templating language. Because Liquid themes are Shopify-specific, moving a store to WooCommerce means rebuilding the theme rather than porting it.

Orphan page

A live page no internal link points to. Crawlers rarely find them, users never do. Migrations create orphans silently, which is why post-move crawls compare link graphs, not just URL lists.

Parked domain

A registered domain showing placeholder or ad content instead of a site. What your expired domain becomes hours after someone drop-catches it.

Redirect chain

A sequence of redirects where one URL points to another that redirects again (A to B to C). Chains slow loading and leak ranking signal; the fix is to point the first URL straight to the last.

Rendered HTML

The page as it exists after JavaScript runs, versus the raw source the server sent. Builder sites often have nearly empty source and everything rendered; cloning them means capturing the rendered result.

robots.txt

A file that tells search-engine crawlers which parts of a site they may or may not request. A misconfigured robots.txt can accidentally block indexing.

Scraping

Automated bulk extraction of website content. Distinct from cloning a site you own: scraping other people's content at scale is where legal and ethical lines get crossed.

SingleFile

A browser extension that saves a fully rendered web page (after JavaScript runs) as one self-contained HTML file, ideal for faithful single-page snapshots.

SSL / HTTPS

The encryption that secures traffic between a browser and a website (the padlock). Required for trust and SEO; sites should redirect HTTP to HTTPS.

Staging site

A private copy of a website used to build and test changes safely before they go live. Staging should always be set to noindex.

Static site

A website served as fixed HTML/CSS/JS files with no server-side database. Fast and cheap to host, but not editable without touching code.

Structured data

Machine-readable markup (usually schema.org JSON-LD) that describes page content to search engines, enabling rich results like FAQs, ratings and breadcrumbs.

WARC

Web ARChive file format, the preservation-grade standard for storing crawled web content, used by the Wayback Machine and professional archiving tools.

Wayback Machine

The Internet Archive's public web archive (web.archive.org), which has stored snapshots of websites since 1996. The primary source for recovering lost sites.

Web scraping

Automated extraction of content from web pages. Useful for archiving and analysis, but it captures only what the browser receives, never server-side logic.

Website cloning

Recreating an existing website as a new, working, editable copy, matching the design and content while rebuilding the site cleanly on a platform you own.

Website migration

Moving a website from one platform or host to another, for example Wix to WordPress, while preserving design, content and search rankings.

Website restoration

Reconstructing a website that is offline or lost, typically from web archives and caches, and relaunching it on a maintainable platform.

WHOIS

The public registry record of a domain: registrar, dates, and (often redacted) owner contacts. The first thing to check when a domain expires or a developer disappears with "your" domain.

WXR (WordPress eXtended RSS)

WordPress's native export format carrying posts, pages, comments and metadata. The cleanest migration input that exists, and the reason WordPress.com moves are the gentlest platform escape.

X-Frame-Options

A header preventing other sites from embedding yours in an iframe, the classic clickjacking defence. Superseded by CSP's frame-ancestors but still checked by every scanner for older browsers.

XML sitemap

A machine-readable list of a site's important URLs submitted to search engines to aid crawling and indexing, regenerated and resubmitted after a migration.

Website Cloning & Migration Glossary