"WP Admin" and "Open site" don't work

What issue or error are you experiencing?

After using WP Migrate to compress my site into a zip file, making sure wp-content and database.sql were the only files inside, and importing the site to Local, I was able to go to WP Admin and log in, but on redirect I encountered a white screen. Not long after, I tried going to WP Admin again but then I got another white page only this time I see this message: “Sorry, you are not allowed to access this page.”

The local-lightning.log file says something about “Access denied” and “Error setting up MySQL user”. This my first time migrating a live WordPress site to be hosted locally, so I’d appreciate some guidance.


What steps can be taken to replicate the issue? Feel free to include screenshots, videos, etc

Here is how the zip created by WP Migrate looks like:

Inside of the “files” folder:

This file structure is “incompatible zip file” according to Local, so every time I tried importing this, I got rejected and the site gets deleted from Local. This is confusing because WP Migrate is literally advertised to use it with Local, which is incredibly misleading because it obviously doesn’t work. So I then decided to try to manually reorganize the zip to only contain wp-content/ and database.sql. As soon as I tried this, I got a different reaction and seemingly got accepted by Local. Here is how that zip file version looks like:


So once I imported this version into Local, I seemingly got accepted. When I pressed “WP Admin” to login, I got redirected to a white screen. A little bit later, I try it again and this time the first thing I see when trying to access WP Admin again I get this:

The live site actually runs on an older version of WordPress, 6.4.4. Perhaps that could be an issue?
Also, the live site runs on 5.5.5-10.3.39-MariaDB, and I picked MariaDB 10.4.32 when setting up on Local.

System Details

  • Local Version: 9.0.1

  • Operating System (OS) and OS version: Windows 11


Local Logs

Attach your Local Logs here (Help Doc - Retrieving Local’s Log)
local-logs.zip (14.5 KB)


Security Reminder
Local does a pretty good job of scrubbing private info from the logs and the errors it produces, however there’s always the possibility that something private can come through. Because these are public forums, always review the screenshots you are sharing to make sure there isn’t private info like passwords being displayed.

Hi @PashaLog

Do you have any antivirus, security, or firewall applications that could be blocking Local? It looks like from the log it might be having trouble connecting. I see mention of AVG Anti-Virus which could be a culprit.

Also make sure that you’re an Admin user and Local has permission to access the Hosts file.

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