Are you facing tight restrictions with your hosting to create zip archive? With Two Part Installation, the backup can be copied from one site to another.

In Duplicator Pro, this installation process is not needed due to the inbuilt DupArchive format, which provides chunked processing for backups of any size. While Duplicator Lite also includes DupArchive, it has a 500 MB backup size limit, and the ZipArchive engine is not chunked.

If you’re on Duplicator Pro and hitting build issues on a restricted or budget host, switch to the DupArchive engine (Settings » Backups » Archive Engine) instead of using Two-Part Installation. See Tips for migrating a large website on a limited hosting plan for the full picture, that guide now correctly points Pro users to DupArchive rather than this Two-Part method.

Note: Two Part Installation is mainly for Duplicator Lite version.

Part 1: Manually Copy WordPress Files

To begin, download all the files from your website. Use either cPanel or a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) client for this task. Make sure to check your hosting account to determine which tool is recommended.

This tutorial shows how to copy WordPress Files from your Source site to Destination site.

Using cPanel

Log in to the cPanel of the source site, click on File Manager, and open the directory of the site. Then, compress/archive the folder and name it as zip file.

Download the zip file to your local computer. Then, navigate to the new location in the Destination site directory. Now, you can extract the zip file and paste it under public_html folder.

Using FTP

Open the root directory of your site using the FTP Client. Copy the downloaded Source site files from your computer to your destination site’s directory.

If you run into permission errors while copying or extracting files manually, see Resolving File Permission Issues.

Part 2: Migrate Database to the Destination site

1. Begin with creating a database-only backup on your Source site. To do this, go to Duplicator » Backups » Add New, and under the component selection, choose only Database (deselect Files), see Creating Database Only Backup for the full walkthrough.
2. Download the database backup and Import database backup manually on your Destination site.

If your build is getting stuck at a specific percentage rather than failing outright due to host restrictions, see Troubleshooting Backup Build Stuck at Specific % instead, that’s a different issue than what this guide addresses.

This way, the database backup along with the manually copied site files will be imported on your destination site successfully using the Lite version of Duplicator.