📑 Table of ContentsHide / Show
Why Duplicator Is the Developer’s Preferred Migration Tool
Duplicator has facilitated over 30 million WordPress migrations. Unlike plugins that require WordPress to be pre-installed on the destination host, Duplicator bundles your entire application — core WordPress files, plugins, media uploads, themes, and database — into two files: an archive.zip and an installer.php script.
Step 1: Build the Duplicator Package
- Install and activate Duplicator from the official repository.
- Go to Duplicator → Packages and click Create New.
- Name your package and click Next. Duplicator will run an automated pre-flight scan checking file sizes, permissions, and PHP timeouts.
- Click Build to generate the archive package.
- Download both the Installer and Archive files to your computer.
Step 2: Prepare the Destination Server
On your new hosting cPanel or control panel:
- Create an empty MySQL database and assign a database user with full privileges.
- Upload
installer.phpand the archive.zipfile into your destinationpublic_htmldirectory.
Step 3: Run the Installer Script
In your web browser, navigate to: https://yourdomain.com/installer.php.
Enter your new MySQL database credentials, review the automated table prefix settings, and proceed. Duplicator will extract files, import tables, and automatically update URLs.
Step 4: Cleanup Temporary Files
Once installation finishes, log in to your new WordPress dashboard. Duplicator will prompt you to delete the installer files and temporary archives to protect your server security.
⚡ Related WordPress Migration & Hosting Guides
- How to Change WordPress Domain Name & Fix Database URLs – Use search-replace tools to update URLs without serialization breaks.
- How to Migrate WordPress to Cloudways or VPS Hosting – Step-by-step zero-downtime server transfer and DNS cutover guide.
- How to Move WordPress from Localhost to Live Server – Migrate local test sites to live web hosting without losing SEO rankings.
- LiteSpeed Cache Master Configuration for WordPress – Fine-tune page caching, guest mode, CSS minification, and Object Cache.
Troubleshooting Archive Timeouts & Database Collations
During large website migrations, Duplicator may stall during the archive creation phase due to shared hosting PHP timeouts (commonly 30 or 60-second execution limits). To guarantee a smooth build on sites larger than 1GB, apply strategic file filters in the Duplicator package settings.
Exclude transient directories like wp-content/cache/, existing backup folders, and raw error log files. Additionally, verify database collation compatibility between your source and destination servers:
# If destination MySQL is older than source (e.g. MySQL 5.7 vs 8.0),
# change collation in installer options from:
utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci ---> utf8mb4_unicode_ciImmediately following package deployment, Duplicator provides a security prompt to remove the installer files. Never skip this step; leaving installer.php and the .zip package publicly accessible on your root server is a severe security vulnerability that allows anyone to re-extract your site.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the maximum website size Duplicator Free can migrate reliably?
Duplicator Free operates smoothly on websites up to approximately 500MB on standard shared hosting. For sites exceeding 1GB, Duplicator Pro with two-part chunking is strongly recommended.
Can Duplicator migrate a WordPress site from local development (XAMPP/LocalWP) to live hosting?
Yes. Duplicator is the industry standard for deploying local development sites to live production servers because its installer automatically updates database domain URLs and file paths.
What should I do if the Duplicator installer gets stuck at Step 2 (Database Extraction)?
In the installer settings, switch the database extraction mode from “Standard” to “Multi-threaded” or “Chunked” to prevent web server request timeouts.