Migrator Is Disappointing

[Gareth LawsonParticipant]

Hi guys,

Firstly let me just state that I do think your plugin is probably the best backup solution for WordPress on the market, but I bought a license primarily to make use of the migrator tool, and this has been hugely disappointing to me. I could have stuck with the free version of the UpdraftPlus plugin and still had the backup functionality I needed.

I specifically asked if there was a way to trial the Migrator tool on the free forums before buying a license, but this was not possible. I was assured that it works as advertised and has been very well received. This is not my experience and I see many others complaining about this specifically on the forums.

As a developer myself I can understand that this is a very difficult tool to create so that it is easy to use and works across as many platforms/hosts as possible, but here is my feedback:

I was hoping the tool would save me time specifically for migrating LIVE websites to copies of the site running on sub domains as test websites. I used Duplicator to do this previously and it was quite a process to delete the files transfer the package and reinstall the entire site. The Migrator is still a long and painful process in my opinion. I have to login to the test copy of the site, disable all plugins, then attempt the migration. This fails often and does not work at all on certain hosts. Again, I understand the difficulty with some hosting providers using mod_security and other types of WAF. Even when the migration does work, it usually takes extremely long (even when excluding uploads). I have tried leaving the migrations to run while I carry on with other things, but they often fail and I have to start again which is frustrating. I know I could also use a common remote backup location rather than a direct site-to-site migration, but that takes even longer, with updraft having to upload the backup to remote storage and then download it again on the test website.

In short, the plugin’s backup functionality is great, but it the migrator does not work as advertised in my opinion. I am not just going to complain though, I have a couple of suggestions. You guys will know whether or not they are really practical having worked on this solution for a long time, so take them or leave them:

I think HTTP is an unreliable and difficult way to transfer large files like backups. How about providing different options for the migrator like you do with the backups, e.g. local migration (same web server), where you could migrate the files using a server-based copy instead of HTTP. How about a FTP-based migration which should be a bit more reliable and should also bypass the firewall related issues? How about an SSH-based migration which would have the benefits of the previous option too?

Thanks again for the great backup solution!

Regards,
Gareth

[udadminKeymaster]

Hi Gareth,

Yes, ultimately if someone’s deploying mod_security with rules designed to block HTTP traffic that isn’t normal web visitors, then that’s going to be going to be a problem for sending your backup over. You can already use FTP, SFTP and SCP to transfer your backup over. To do so, go to the ‘Settings’ tab, and to the ‘Remote Storage’ section, and enter the settings of the destination WP site, and in particular the path to the directory “wp-content/updraft”. Then, use the “Backup Now” button to send your backup there. Finally, when the backup has completed, on the destination WP site, go to the ‘Existing Backups’ tab and press the ‘Rescan local storage’ link, in order to detect the backup.

I will add a task to our internal tracker to see if we can make this possibility more obvious.

David

[Gareth LawsonParticipant]

Hi David,

As I said, I understand the issue with something like mod_security, but even when there were not firewall-related issues, I still find the migrator unreliable and slow, even when trying to keep the backup set small by excluding uploads.

Point taken about changing the backup config to do a migration, but to do that, I don’t need the migrator functionality at all, so my investment was still not worthwhile. I could have used the free version of your plugin to achieve that.

Cheers,
Gareth

[Author]

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