When you need to move a very large WordPress site, it comes with special challenges not found with small and ‘standard’ sized sites. Shared hosts, especially cheaper budget hosts, can be tightly limited in both CPU and I/O.
What follows are a couple of options for moving a very large site using Duplicator Pro. It is not a comprehensive explanation, but rather a complement to the main article, How To Easily Move A WordPress Site – so be sure to read that as well.
Option 1: Use the DupArchive Format
Duplicator Pro and Lite both support the “DupArchive” archive format which has a file extension .daf, short for Duplicator archive format. Switching to the DupArchive format allows one to bundle up a large site into a single package rather than have to filter and move files as Option 2 does.
To use DupArchive:
- Set Duplicator Pro > Settings > Packages > Archive Engine to DupArchive
- The Lite version of the plugin only supports DupArchive on sites that are 500MB or lower
After making this settings change, building and installing a package is identical to the way you do it when using the zip format.
Option 2: Use Zip Format with a Two-Part Install
Some users still prefer to use the .zip format. In this case we recommend users to perform a two-part install. The process for this workflow is described here.