Having trouble importing or exporting your WordPress site?
Here's 6 quick things to quickly check using All in One Migration that may be the cause of the dreaded hanging issue - importing or exporting.
1. Server space.
As the backup process takes a copy of your WordPress installation, theme files, plugins and uploads (if you've opted for these) you will need to have at least double the storage space available on your hosting account. Even if you download the file, it still stores the file in a temporary folder (located in its plugin directory). The same occurs for those uploading to Amazon or Google etc with the optional extension plugins. So just make sure you have double the website space on the initial (or staging) and receiving server.
2. Timeout issues.
Modify your .htaccess in the root WordPress directory to increase the time available to process the backup. You can do this by accessing cPanel and opening either the root directory or WordPress installation directory. You'll need to have your cPanel File broswer option checked to view all hidden files (.htaccess).
Add this to your .htaccess -
php_value max_execution_time 3600
php_value max_input_time 3600
php_value session.gc_maxlifetime 3600This is overkill, so please view this as a temporary modification to your .htaccess.
3. Forbidden access.
Have you hardened your WordPress install? A lot of the time, this involves strict .htaccess rules for the /wp-includes folder. This can prevent the backup from working.
4. Can't read database.
You may have also placed rules on wp-config.php, preventing it to be readable by anything other than WordPress. All in One migration will need to read it so that it can see the database credentials, to access, read and backup your database. It'll need this to restore it too.
5. Plugin and Theme conflicts
You can try disabling all of your plugins and selecting a default WordPress theme. Be aware, if you're using a complex theme that has many configuration settings - you may want to export or copy configuration settings as these can be lost. You can also lose widget and permalink settings when switching themes.
6. All in One Plugin version.
If all else fails, download an older version of the plugin. The older 2.14 version saves the backups as ZIP files, not the proprietory .wpress file and has fewer conflicts than the latest versions.
What next?
Generally we only use All in One Migration for convenient migrations or backups. We've worked on a few servers where there's no easy fix, and it's simply easier to download the WordPress database manually and find/replace all instances of the domain name, and reconnecting the credentials on the new host via config.php. I agree - this can be painful if you're in a rush - we've found UpdraftPlus is not a bad alternative. You can buy the Migrate upgrade which allows pipes the website backup straight across to the new host (server to server, no downloading and reuploading!).
Hope this helps! Share or comment if it does! 🙂