All-in-One WP Migration FTP Extension 2.95

I just spent the last 14 hours migrating a bloated WooCommerce monstrosity. The client had 15GB of unoptimized images and a database that looked like a warzone. Vanilla migration tools were choking. I ended up relying on the All-in-One WP Migration FTP Extension, and honestly, I have a love-hate relationship with this thing.

Why I even bother with it

Pushing a 15GB .wpress file through a standard browser upload is suicide. You hit Cloudflare’s 100MB limit, or PHP’s upload_max_filesize laughs in your face.

The All-in-One WP Migration FTP Extension bypasses this garbage. You just hook it up to your offsite storage via SFTP, and it chunks the transfer in the background directly server-to-server.

The ugly technical reality

But let’s not pretend it’s flawless. If you open the Network tab in DevTools during a massive export, you’ll see a relentless stream of POST requests to admin-ajax.php?action=ai1wm_export.

If your target server has aggressive rate limiting or a low max_execution_time, those requests start returning 503s or 504s. The UI just sits there spinning at 45%. It’s infuriating.

My dirty fix for stalled imports

Here’s a scenario: the import from FTP stalls at 99% during the “Restoring database” phase. What were they thinking with their default chunking logic?

To fix this, I usually have to dive into the core plugin files. Open wp-content/plugins/all-in-one-wp-migration/constants.php.

I look for AI1WM_MAX_CHUNK_SIZE and drop it from 5MB to something like 2MB. It slows down the process, but it stops the server from killing the PHP worker.

GPL, Activation, and Licensing

I’ve been testing a GPL copy of the All-in-One WP Migration FTP Extension on my staging rig. It’s fully functional, unlimited website usage, no weird restrictions.

There’s no license key activation required to make the core features work. You just install the base plugin, upload the FTP extension zip, and the “FTP” option magically appears in the Export/Import dropdown.

For updates, you just manually overwrite the plugin folder via SSH or FTP. Simple, no dashboard nagging.

Where it writes data (and leaves trash)

Keep an eye on wp-content/ai1wm-backups. This extension pulls the file from your remote FTP server and dumps it there before extraction.

If the process crashes, it doesn’t clean up after itself. I’ve had servers run out of disk space because a failed 10GB import left a .wpress file sitting in that folder. You have to manually nuke it via SSH.

Dev FAQ: All-in-One WP Migration FTP Extension

Why does the FTP connection test pass, but the export fails immediately?

Check your folder permissions on the remote server. The extension needs the target directory to be 755, and it struggles if the FTP user is chrooted weirdly. Also, check the error_log for OpenSSL issues on your source server.

Can I use this to bypass the 512MB import limit on the free version?

Yes. The extension inherently removes the import limit because it processes the file directly from the remote server or local backup folder, bypassing the PHP upload handler entirely.

It’s stuck at “Checking extensions…” during import. How do I fix it?

It’s usually a caching plugin conflict. Redis Object Cache or WP Rocket minification breaks the JS that polls the progress. Disable all caching plugins and clear Cloudflare before starting the import.