• Hi,

    I need to move a large installation of WordPress and would like some advice.

    By ‘large’ I mean lots of images (around 5 gigabytes of files) and not so much posts and pages, so i believe the exported XML file won’t be very big and can fit the upload limit of the new host without any problems.

    When moving websites using the XML file, WordPress can automatically download the attached images used in posts, so I don’t need to manually download the files via FTP and then reupload it to the new server.

    However, what would happen with such a large media library? Am I at risk of getting a timeout during import/download?

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  • Moderator James Huff

    (@macmanx)

    Am I at risk of getting a timeout during import/download?

    Possibly, it really depends on the configuration of both servers.

    In general, with large moves, we typically recommend backing up the database and restoring it at the destination, then moving the files via something like SFTP or SCP.

    SFTP and SCP are designed for moving files, so they won’t timeout like a PHP process could.

    https://codex.wordpress.org/Moving_WordPress

    I have moved sites as large as 4.2GB on several occasions. The fastest and most reliable method has involved going one step farther than James, as I’ve had access to tar.gz format compression and decompression on both the source and destination servers.

    My point is that I would much prefer to move a dozen or so large .tar.gz compressed files than I would tens of thousands of smaller files.

    To speed things up, I try and transfer directly across the Internet between the two web servers, rather than download to my own PC and upload to the new server, because home Internet speeds, especially upload, are so slow.

    Finally, last time I checked, Windows still has a bug with the built-in .zip decompression on files bigger than 4GB, I think it is. It will give you some zero length files. Which is why I stick to GZip.

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