I’ve now seen from the WP error log that the plugin has restored the original theme, which is causing a problem (probably connected to PHP 7->8). Is there any way of stopping the plugin doing that, and using another theme?
Thanks.
Plugin Author
Yani
(@yaniiliev)
Hi! Sorry you’re hitting this – let’s tackle both issues.
1. Import stuck at “Restoring database… 0%”
That step usually stalls when PHP hits max_execution_time or memory_limit on the new host. A few things to try (back up the destination first, even if it’s a fresh WP):
– Raise these in php.ini / .user.ini / .htaccess:
max_execution_time = 600
max_input_time = 600
memory_limit = 512M
– Make sure the disk isn’t full and that wp-content/ai1wm-backups/ and wp-content/uploads/ are writable.
More detail here: 15 Common WordPress Migration Errors.
2. Stopping the old theme from being activated
The plugin does a full-site restore, so there isn’t a built-in “skip theme” toggle – it will re-activate whatever theme was active on the source. The clean workaround is to let the import finish, then force a fallback theme:
– Make sure a default theme (e.g. Twenty Twenty-Four) is present in wp-content/themes/ on the new host.
– Via FTP/file manager, rename the broken theme’s folder (e.g. my-theme → my-theme-off). WordPress will automatically fall back to the default theme on the next request.
Then update/replace the incompatible theme with a PHP 8-compatible version before re-enabling it.
If it still stalls after raising the PHP limits, share what appears in wp-content/debug.log and we’ll dig further.
Thanks, I had already resolved this, by changing the selected theme as you suggest. However I wasn’t aware of the automatic default theme behaviour, so I changed some database entries to make that happen.
