"An unknown error occurred during archive": creating a zip archive in Monsta

Hosting Support
1

Username

epiz_32457678

Error Message

When trying to create a zip archive of a folder containing my website archive (~70MB) I get the error: “An unknown error occurred during archive.”

Other Information

Situation

  1. I am trying to migrate my local WordPress website onto a free subdomain on InfinityFree.
  2. I created an archive and installer of the website using the Duplicator plugin.
  3. I can’t upload the archive directly because it’s too large, so I’m using FileZilla.
  4. I can’t transfer FTP the full zip archive (presumably because it’s too large), so I’ve unzipped the archive and transferred the folder and installer that way.
  5. When I try to run the installer, it complains it complains that I don’t have a zip archive.
  6. To resolve this, I tried to create a zip archive of the website archive directory by right clicking and clicking Create Zip Archive.

Question

  1. Does anyone know why I might be getting this zip archive error, or
  2. Any ideas on how else I can transfer my local site to by free InfinityFree account?

Any thoughts greatly appreciated.

2

Why are you trying to create a zip with the online file manager? Since you have FileZilla installed, just download the files and then upload them to the new account, no plugins needed. Just don’t forget to export/import your database!

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3

Max file size is 10mb on free hosting

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4

Thanks, I’ll try that! Is that along the lines of what’s suggested here? Moving WordPress – Documentation

I’m a newbie, so I got scared off at the prospect of downloading the site files and db myself – fearing that I’d miss something. Also, I wasn’t sure how to install them once they were on the server. But if that’s the way to do it, I’ll try again.

5

First, you will want to backup your website from your localhost installation.

  • Put all of the files into a folder on your desktop
  • Export the database as an .sql file and also save it to your desktop

Then, you will want to login to your InfinityFree account and open the control panel, and navigate to PHPMyAdmin. Create a database with the same name as the name of the database you used on localhost. After you create the database, open it, and use the “import” tab at the top of the page to upload that .sql file.

Then, login to FTP using FileZilla, and upload the contents of that folder on your desktop to your htdocs folder.

You may have to change your WordPress site URL if it does not work.

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6

Thanks for this walkthrough. You say that

You may have to change your WordPress site URL if it does not work.

Could you elaborate on this? Under what circumstances exactly should I consider changing my site URL, and why would that solve the problem?

7

If the URL of the site you are moving from is different from the URL of the site you are moving to

Because WordPress will redirect to the URL it is setup to use. So if you moved your installation to a new URL, WordPress does not recognize that, and tries to send you back to the old URL.

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