Troubleshooting Issues on Backup & Migration Pro

First of all, we extend our sincere gratitude to the fantastic users for having purchased and given us feedback on WPvivid Backup Pro. It’s your generous support and feedback that encourage us to keep perfecting the plugin.

Thank you!

From the feedback we have gathered so far, we’ve put together this list of the frequently reported issues, our thoughts on the cause of the error, and recommendations on how to solve them, so that users facing the same issues can easily and quickly find a solution.

Backup Restore and Migration Issues

1. Backup timeout

Cause: Specific configurations and/or insufficient resources on your web server to run a backup, especially for large websites.

Solution: Go to the plugin settings and set up the configurations below:

In General Settings:

1. Uncheck the option of ‘Merge all the backup files into single package when a backup completes’

In Advanced Settings:

2. Check the option of ‘Enable optimization mode for web hosting/shared hosting’
3. Compress files every 100 MB
4. PHP script execution timeout: 300 seconds
5. Retrying times when encountering a time-out error: 9 times

If the error persists, please also ‘Exclude the files larger than 200 MB’ in advanced settings (Large files over 200Mb are generally not website files, they are backup files created by other plugins, so your website content will not be lost after migration).

For migration, if you have timeout issue on your website, we recommend that you first back up to localhost, then download and upload it to the target site, and then restore it there. This can prevent you from getting stuck again during the transfer.

2. Content missing after migration or migration not complete

Possible Causes and solutions:

Possible Cause1: Restore was not completed successfully

Please make sure that the restore was completed successfully. Did you see the success message after the restoration? If you did not see the message, please run the restoration again and wait for the success message to pop up, then check the website again.

Possible Cause2: The target site is not a fresh WordPress installation

Please set a fresh WordPress installation on the target site then upload and restore the backup again.

Possible Cause3: PHP environments are different

Please make sure that the source site and the target site have the same PHP environment or at least the PHP versions are not much different.

Possible Cause4: Cache, firewall, 301 redirect plugins

Please temporarily deactivate cache plugins and firewall plugins on the source site, then run migration again.

Possible Cause5: Using Elementor and Oxygen page builders

Some themes or page builders (for example, Elementor and Oxygen) have their own migration methods, once the migration is complete, their data need to be regenerated.

Migrate Elementor: Go to WordPress admin dashboard >> Elementor >> Tools >> General >> Regenerate CSS and click on Regenerate Files button and save changes.

Migrate Oxygen: Please follow the instructions in their Importing & Exporting documentation.

If the problem persists, please contact us and we’d love to help identify the problem if you could provide us a download like of the backup.

3. Backup or migrate a site where AffiliateWP is installed

When backing up or migrating a site with AffiliateWP, please back up everything except the wp_affiliate_wp_campaigns table. The wp_affiliate_wp_campaigns table is not an actual table, it is a “view”.

Here is a AffiliateWP official documentation for how to backup or migrate affiliate data:
https://docs.affiliatewp.com/article/1416-how-to-back-up-or-migrate-affiliate-data

Also, before creating a staging site, please uncheck wp_affiliate_wp_campaigns table in database to avoid problems.

4. Unable to log in or ‘Website is inaccessible’ after migration

Cause: Inconsistency between your site URL in your database and the URL of your website. This issue usually occurs because some plugins, for example, Really Simple SSL, that have modified your website domain name or the site url and home url you’ve set in the wp-config.php file.

Solution: Please use phpMyAdmin to find the Options table in the database of the target site. In the Options table, search for an option with the option_name ‘prefix(say ‘wp1′)_user_roles’ and see if it has the same prefix as your table prefix(say ‘wp’). For example, if the search result is ‘wp1_user_roles’ but your table prefix is ‘wp’, then you need to change wp1 to wp.

Also, check and change the prefix of the ‘prefix(say wp1)_capabilities’ option in the same Options table in the same way.

5. Backup can not be canceled

Cause: Scheduled tasks on your website are not executed properly

Solution: Please check your WP-Cron via WP Crontrol plugin and make sure it is working properly. To troubleshot the wp-cron issue, read on.

6. Backup schedules do not run on time

Generally, scheduled tasks on a live website may be executed 3 to 5 minutes later than the time you set. But sometimes there are cases where the scheduled tasks does not execute for several hours. The possible reasons would be:

Possible Cause1: Website cache

The cache will direct the website visits to the cache and not the actual WordPress, resulting in the scheduled task not being triggered or executed on time. You’ll need to clear cache on your website.

If you are using any cache plugin, make sure the plugin doesn’t cache wp-cron.php. Otherwise, the backup tasks won’t be executed.

Possible Cause2: WP-cron disabled

Disabling wp-cron will cause the scheduled tasks to be delayed or not to execute. Make sure wp cron is enabled on your website.

Possible Cause3: Scheduled task queue occupied

Some plugins will set some scheduled tasks that are executed once every 1 minute or 10 seconds. They will occupy the scheduled task queue and cause the scheduled tasks to be executed normally. Please disable these frequently executed scheduled tasks.

7. PHP Fatal error: Unknown: Failed opening required ‘/var/www/html/wordfence-waf.php’ (include_path=’.:/usr/share/php’) in Unknown on line 0

Cause: The configurations in WordFence has written some absolute paths, after the migration, the environment has changed and the file path structure have changed as well, Wordfence can not find the wordfence-waf.php file

Solution: To fix this issue, please Revert the Firewall Optimization manually.

8. Restore Timeout

Possible causes and solutions:

Possible cause1: Fastcgi ‘on’ on your server

If the Fastcgi is enabled on your web server, requests that exceed a certain time, for example, 30s, will be killed. Please contact your web host to modify fastcgi timeout to a higher value (900s at least) to ensure the PHP scripts has enough time to execute. At the same time, please go to WPvivid plugin Settings >> Advanced Settings >> modify the PHP script execution timeout for backup to 900s >> Save changes and run the restore again.

Possible cause2: On Litespeed web server

If your website is on Litespeed, please contact your server manager and ask him to increase the server timeout to at least 900s.

Possible cause3: Godaddy web hosting

Note: If you are using Godaddy web hosting, please note that Godaddy limits the request time to about 5 minutes. We’d recommend you to reduce the value of “Compress files every” in the plugin settings to, for example, 50Mb. At the same time, uncheck “Merge all backup files into single package”, then create a new backup and restore it.

9. Restore file with the error ‘Failed to decode restore data file’

Cause: This problem is usually caused by insufficient disk space and disk io limits on your server.

Solution: Please make sure that you have enough disk space on you web server, the amount of free disk space on the web server usually needs to be twice the size of the website. If you do have enough disk space on the server, please then check if you have ever modified some settings on your server that will kill a PHP request exceeding a short time, for example, 4 minutes (240 seconds). Then modify them to allow more time for PHP requests to execute.

If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us.