How to extract All-in-One WP Migration wpress file

All-in-One WP Migration .wpress archives can be very large, and importing them through the plugin’s web interface may be too slow or time out. As an alternative, you can upload the .wpress file to your account and extract it manually via SSH.

Install wpress-extract

All Hawk Host servers include Node.js. Install the extraction tool with:

npm install wpress-extract

Once installed, the binary is located at:

~/node_modules/.bin/wpress-extract

Extract the .wpress file

~/node_modules/.bin/wpress-extract mywordpress.wpress

Replace mywordpress.wpress with the name of your .wpress file. This creates a folder with the same name containing all extracted files, including a database.sql file.

Fix the database prefix

The database.sql file uses a placeholder prefix that must be replaced with your actual WordPress table prefix (typically wp_). First, determine which placeholder your file uses:

grep -i SERVMASK database.sql

Then run the appropriate replacement:

If the output shows SERVMASKPREFIX_:

sed -i 's/SERVMASKPREFIX_/wp_/g' database.sql

If the output shows SERVMASK_PREFIX_:

sed -i 's/SERVMASK_PREFIX_/wp_/g' database.sql

Caution

If your WordPress installation uses a custom table prefix (something other than wp_), replace wp_ in the commands above with your actual prefix. You can find your prefix in your wp-config.php file in the $table_prefix variable.

Import the database and files

1. Import database.sql into your WordPress database using phpMyAdmin or the MySQL command line.

2. Copy the remaining files and folders from the extracted directory into your WordPress installation’s wp-content directory.

If you need assistance with this process, contact our support team and we can complete the import for you.