Error Importing Site when trying to drop Duplicator Pro archive zip file

Greetings Everyone;

When I try to use a *_archive.zip generated by WP plugin Duplicator Pro to import into Local By Flywheel, I receive the following error message:

“Error Importing Site. we couldn’t figure out what to do with the import file provided. Please extract it manually.”

I see that a number of folks are having a similar issue, BUT I do not see a solution provided by the Flywheel folks???

Hey @alhloghomes

I think that usually, the Duplicator Pro plugin works by installing the plugin onto the site you want to migrate to and then using the plugin within the WP Admin to import zip file.

If you are unable to use the plugin for whatever reason you can try to manually overcome this by using Local’s import feature.

Local tries it’s best to import a site that is contained within a zip file, but not all zip files are created in a way that allows for that.

I’ve never tried importing a zip created by the WP Duplicator Pro plugin, but here are a few things to keep in mind:

  • All Local needs within the zip is the wp-content folder along with a database dump in the form of a .sql file

  • In a situation like this, I would recommend unzipping the Duplicator Pro plugin zip file in a temporary location, like on your desktop.

  • Create another folder on your desktop and call it something like temp-migration, and copy the wp-content folder and the file ending in .sql from the Duplicator Pro archive folder

  • Zip up the temp-migration folder and use this zip to import into Local

If you run into issues, can you take a screenshot of what the contents are of the Duplicator Pro archive looks like? We might be able to help identify other ways to help get the site migrated.

– Ben