Articles on: Setup & Manage

Why is the styling of the site not working on the Clone?

When you preview or publish a Clone, you may notice that the page looks broken: styles are missing, images do not appear, or certain features stop working. This usually happens because CSS, JavaScript, or image files are being served through the translated URL instead of the original site.

This article explains why this happens and how to fix it in under a minute.

Why Does This Happen?

When Clonable translates your site, it rewrites URLs on the page so visitors stay on the cloned version. In most cases this is exactly what you want. However, for static files like stylesheets, scripts, and images, this rewriting causes problems.

These files need to be loaded directly from the original site. When their URLs get rewritten to the cloned domain, the browser cannot find them or is blocked from loading them, and the page breaks.

How to Fix It

The solution is to add the folder path where these files are stored on your original site to the Substitution Exclusions in Clonable. This tells Clonable to leave those URLs alone and serve the files from the original location.

Step 1: Find the folder path

Look at the URL of any broken file. You can do this by right-clicking a broken image or opening your browser console (F12) and checking the Network or Console tab for failed requests.

The path you need is the folder that contains the files, for example:

/wp-content/themes/yourtheme/assets/

Usually on the Clone the path is added to the new URL, for example https://site-address/de/wp-content/themes/yourtheme/assets/ which is not the location where you files are stored as the Clones don't store any files. The trick is to find the path on the original site. Once you found that link you can add that to the Substitution exclusions.

Step 2: Add the path to Substitution Exclusions

Log in to your Clonable dashboard
Open Advanced settings for the affected clone
Go to Substitution Exclusions
Paste the folder URL (for example: https://www.site-address.com/wp-content/themes/yourtheme/assets/)
Click Save and the changes take effect immediately.

Step 3: Check the result

Reload the cloned page. The CSS, JavaScript, and images should now load correctly from the original site.

Tips

If multiple file types are broken, check whether they all share a common parent folder. Adding one exclusion for the parent folder will often fix all of them at once.

Do not exclude the root domain of your original site. That would prevent Clonable from translating any links at all. Only exclude the specific folder that contains static assets.

Still Seeing Issues?

If files are still not loading after adding the exclusion, the files may be stored across multiple folders. Check the console for each failing request and add an exclusion for each folder path.
If you are unsure which path to add, open a chat with the Clonable support team and share a screenshot of the browser console. We will help you identify the right exclusion.

Updated on: 07/05/2026

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