What is the Site Transfer Wizard?

One of the most common uses of Akeeba Backup is transferring a site between different locations (folders, subdomains, domains and servers). Typically this involves taking a backup, downloading it to your computer, uploading it to the new location alongside Kickstart and launching Kickstart to extract the backup archive and proceed with the restoration. The download and upload part of this process takes a lot of time, especially when you have a slower connection. The Site Transfer Wizard will save you some precious time by eliminating the need to transfer the backup archive through your computer, instead performing a server to server transfer.

We recommend that you try using the Site Transfer Wizard without reading this documentation section. You only need to refer to this documentation in case a server issue or a mistake in the information you entered prevents you from using it. That's why this documentation section is brutally long; it's troubleshooting, not regular usage documentation. The Site Transfer Wizard is intuitive enough to use without reading its documentation.

Prerequisites

Before you begin you must have create a new database for the destination site. This is something that Akeeba Backup and its restoration script is not allowed to do due to the configuration of most servers. This has to do with your server's database security settings and cannot be "worked around" in any way. If you are not sure how to do it please contact your host - this is a server-specific task and they are the only people who can help you with it.

You also need to know how to connect to the target location. This requires knowing the FTP, FTPS or SFTP connection information to the target location. This is required even if you are transferring to a subdirectory, subdomain or domain on the same server your site is currently on. If you are not sure how to obtain this information please contact your host; they are the only people who can help you accurately figure out this information.

If you will be using FTP or FTPS to transfer your site your current server must either have the PHP cURL extension installed with FTP support or the PHP FTP functions enabled.It must not block outbound connection to the remote server's FTP port (typically port 21). The remote FTP server must allow connections from your site's current server and allow at least 7 connection attempts to be made within 1 second.

If you will be using SFTP to transfer your site your current server must either have the PHP cURL extension installed with SFTP support of the PHP SSH2 extension installed. It must not block outbound connection to the remote server's FTP port (typically port 22). The remote FTP server must allow connections from your site's current server and allow at least 7 connection attempts to be made within 1 second.

In every case the remote location MUST be accessible through HTTP/HTTPS over the Internet from your site's server and your computer. Akeeba Backup will be checking that and won't let you proceed with the transfer if it can't connect.

Backup age check

The Site Transfer Wizard requires a recent backup, taken within the last 24 hours using the currently active backup profile. If one is not detected you will be notified. If you want to use a backup taken with a different profile please remember to activate that profile from Akeeba Backup's main page before clicking on Site Transfer Wizard.

Click the Backup Now! button to take a new backup with the current backup profile. After the backup is complete you will need to go back to the main page and then click on Site Transfer Wizard again.

Setting up the transfer target URL

When a recent backup is detected the Site Transfer Wizard will let you know how much free space you will need (approximately!) on the target server. Please make sure that you have enough disk space before proceeding.

Afterwards please enter the URL of the target site and click the Check button. You must enter the full URL to the target site including the http:// or https:// prefix and any path to the site but without the index.php part. For example you need to enter something like https://www.example.com, http://subdomain.example.net or http://localhost/mysite.

The Site Transfer Wizard will check that the URL is accessible from your server.Please note that if the URL returns an error, including but not limited to 403 Forbidden and 500 Internal Server Error, you will receive a message telling you that the URL is inaccessible. In some very rare circumstances you may be receiving this message in error. In those cases you can click on the I want to ignore this warning and proceed at my own risk button and proceed anyway. Please note that you are doing so at your own risk. We will not be able to help you if something doesn't work or breaks!

Setting up the connection

The next step lets you tell the Site Transfer Wizard how to connect to your target site to transfer files.

Select one of the available transfer methods (not all of them may be available on your server):

If your target site supports more than one transfer methods please try using the most secure ones first. The order of preference, from MOST to least secure is: SFTP, FTPS, FTP. Moreover, if you are given the choice between a method that uses cURL and one which doesn't please try using the cURL one first. If none of them works for you please check your connection information and retry. If nothing works despite the connection information being correct you have a case where the two servers cannot talk to each other due to networking, firewall or setup issues. The easiest thing you can do is use the Manually option to transfer your site by manually uploading your backup archive.

Enter the connection information below and click on Proceed with restoration to get to the next step. Please note that if you chose Manually above the next step simply gives you instructions for performing the transfer and the rest of this documentation section does not apply.

Files transfer and restoration

At this point the Site Transfer Wizard is going to make some sanity checks and upload some files on your server.

If the connection fails for any reason you will be told so. Please double check the connection information and the FTP/SFTP directory. The latter must exist and be both readable and writeable. If you still get an error despite all the connection information being correct please try a different connection method. If all available methods fail please do contact both hosts (the one your site is currently on and the one you're trying to transfer to). One or both of the servers have a server protection which prevents the two servers from talking to each other. If you cannot get your hosts to resolve that issue your only choice will be using the Manually option above. Unfortunately there is nothing we can do about it since it's the server which doesn't allow the server-to-server transfer in any way.

If the target server and location is the same as the one where your current site exists the process will be aborted. You MUST NOT use the Site Transfer Wizard to restore a backup archive on your own site. Either use the Restore feature in the Manage Backups Page (Professional version only) or use Akeeba Kickstart to extract the backup archive and start the restoration.

If a .htaccess file is detected on the target location the process will be aborted. The .htaccess files can interfere in the way PHP script execute, corrupting the upload of the backup archive or simply blocking the upload, extraction or restoration process. As a precaution the Site Transfer Wizard will not proceed in this case unless you delete the .htaccess file.

After these basic checks the Site Transfer Wizard will try to upload the two Kickstart files (kickstart.php and kickstart.transfer.php) to your target location and create a new world-writable (0777 permissions) directory called kicktemp. Yes, we are aware that the world writable permissions are REALLY BAD for security - but only if you let them persist. We only create this directory temporarily and only use it for temporary data. After the process is done this directory is removed, therefore eliminating any possible security concern. If any of these operations fails you will receive an error message. If this happens please make sure that the target directory is writeable. If you are not sure please ask your host for assistance.

If the FTP/SFTP Directory you've entered does not correspond to the URL to the new site you have entered you will be told so. You CANNOT receive this message in error. If you get this message you MUST check that the directory corresponds to the URL you've entered. If you are not sure, or if you think that Akeeba Backup is wrong (it's not), do check with your host. This is the most common mistake people make. Trust us. This is exactly why we added this check.

Afterwards the Site Transfer Wizard will attempt to upload the backup archive file(s). This is done in small, 1Mb chunks. The file is NOT uploaded using FTP, FTPS or SFTP. Why? Because, as we explained previously in this documentation, transferring a big file can take too long which will cause PHP or your web server to halt with a timeout error. The Site Transfer Wizard is instead sending 1Mb of data at a time to Kickstart (which it uploaded in the previous step). Kickstart on the target location "assembles" the archive file(s) from these 1Mb chunks behind the scenes. This lets us transfer really big backup archives without timing out. The progress of the upload is displayed on the page.

However, this may lead to problems on some servers. Since the Site Transfer Wizard is making a lot of repeated requests to the kickstart.php URL on the target location some servers may mistakenly assume that this is an attack on the server. Other servers may not like that a lot of the CPU is being used by that site hosting account all of a sudden. If this kind of server protection is triggered you will receive an error message. Depending on the server and host they might also temporarily block the IP address of your site's current server, making it impossible to run the Site Transfer Wizard again for a period of a few minutes to a full day. If you get in this kind of situation you will have to use the Manually option and transfer the backup archives yourselves. Unfortunately there is nothing we can do about it since it's the server which doesn't allow the server-to-server transfer of large files.

When the backup archive files are fully transferred you will see a button called Run Kickstart. Click on it to launch Kickstart on the target URL. Kickstart allows you to extract the backup archive on the target server. This is required since the actual restoration script is stored inside the backup archive. If you are unsure how to proceed after this point please consult our video tutorials on transferring your site to a new server. Ignore the part where you upload Kickstart and the backup archive; this is already done for you by the Site Transfer Wizard.