Cloning Spaces for Test/Dev?

[Charisma Riley]

Originally, I was looking to clone our SP site to make a dev/test site. However, I'm not sure that since we're in the cloud, there's much reason for a separate instance, or if I should be cloning a space instead and then develop/build in that cloned space instead. So my questions are two-fold:

• Is it possible to clone a single space? Would this offer any benefit over cloning an entire site (the structure of it)?
• Do SharePoint designers and developers usually develop in a test instance? (I come from the world of web development where I do everything in a text environment before I even attempt to roll it out live.)

Thanks everyone!

[#2 · Accepted solution]

If you use PnP for creating your SPO Sites and for provisioning your customizations, you should be able to easily clone your sites so you can work on a Dev Site and once you are ready, deploy your dev to production

[#3]

Do you have any resources you specifically recommend for PnP with SPO sites?

[#4]

Sure!
This is actually an old post, but it perfectly describes the process of cloning a site using PowerShell PnP: https://blog.portiva.nl/2016/03/15/provisioning-site-collection-with-office-dev-pnp-powershell/