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WordPress Duplicator Plugin ZipArchive Failure… My Solution

By Small Biz Geek on April 28, 2015 · Filed Under: Web Development, WordPress Updated: March 9, 2018

I tried to take a backup of my WordPress site using Duplicator but was struck down immediately with a problem I’ve never seen before: a PHP support failure.

In this post I’ll share what I did to solve this nuisance issue.

Duplicator ZipArchive Failure

ZipArchive Failure

Below is a screenshot of exactly what happened. I am using the latest version of WordPress and the latest version of PHP on my GoDaddy Linux shared host.

I expanded the window and learned that something called ZipArchive had failed.

Without this crucial functionality I wouldn’t be able to make my backup.

Duplicator Plugin ZipArchive Failure

Unable to Build Package

This is the first time such an error has occurred but it isn’t the first time a plugin has become unstable.

WordPress plugins (especially free ones) should not be relied upon for any crucial part of business website backup.

Despite trying to wean myself off backup plugins I still wanted to get this one repaired. When it works it works well.

This post might also help if you’re using BackUpBuddy or another plugin using zip file compression to build archive packages.

I’ll walk you through my experiences with screenshots included. The solution is at the end.

Problem with the Host?

After some quick research I was certain this is something GoDaddy would have to deal with their end.

Most of the forum threads indicated I would need to have a conversation with the host and get them to resolve it.

Here’s a few links I found:

Zip Extension: How to Turn On? Please Help

ZipArchive extension required for compression

GoDaddy Phone Call

Once I got through on the phone I explained I’d been talking to the hosting support earlier in the day regarding php.ini and that in the course of that conversation the technician had upgraded my version of PHP to 5.4.36 as well as making some changes to php.ini.

It was my opinion that something might have happened that had stopped ZipArchive working.

I would turn out to be right.

It was nothing to do with version compatibility as is usually the case with plugins.

While I talked to GoDaddy support I searched online, combing the Life In The Grid support knowledgebase (they’re the authors of Duplicator).

I found the following link which proved useful:

Working With PHP ZipArchive

The section titled Working with PHP ZipArchive suggested looking in the Duplicator settings to check if  ZipArchive was enabled.

Here’s what it suggests:

“For creating Packages the Duplicator currently requires the ZipArchive class to be installed and working. For installing a package it is not required. Below are instructions for getting the ZipArchive working in your environment if it is not already setup.

Duplicator Settings

ON HOSTED SERVERS

Just contact your hosting provider and tell them you want PHP with Zip support so that the “ZipArchive Class” will work. This is a very common feature and is available on almost all shared hosting environments. Please view the following link for a list of approved hosting companies that we personally recommend for working with the Duplicator.”

By the way, some of that above information is out of date: you want Duplicator > Tools > Diagnostics > PHP Information.

Once I was on the right part I took a screenshot of what I could see:

ZipArchive Enabled in phpinfo

Notice how --enable-zip=shared is visible.

This means ZipArchive is enabled but for whatever reason was not being detected by my PHP configuration.

Me and the Godaddy technician were stumped. Stumped I tells ya.

We continued discussing the problem until the answer presented itself.

The Solution: extension=zip.so

The Working with PHP ZipArchive section of the Life In The Grid knowledgebase had the solution.

The fix was that I needed to add a single line of code to php.ini.

“ON YOUR COMPUTER

On your own computer you will to to make sure the Zip extensions are enabled for PHP. Check your php.ini file for the following:

On Windows: extension=php_zip.dll

On MAC and Linux: extension=zip.so”

Seeing as I am a user of GoDaddy Linux Shared hosting I dropped extension=zip.so in my php.ini.

ZipArchive was enabled all along, but the additional command line gave what I describe as “the kiss of life” to the PHP configuration.

After I copied php.ini to the server root I logged into cPanel and visited the PHP processes area.

PHP Processes in Linux cPanel

From there I killed all the processes to flush the PHP cache and then went back to my WP dashboard to refresh the Duplicator package build area.

Kill PHP Processes

So yeah… it worked! What a relief. Here’s  screenshot showing all Duplicator requirements as having passed:

Duplicator ZipArchive Success

To be doubly sure everything was okay I built a new package. This went without incident.

Analysis

If you’re using Duplicator, I hope this has helped. I also hope you will not rely completely on automatic plugins for backing up WordPress sites.

WordPress Manual Back UpIt’s strongly advised to take manual WordPress backups in addition to creating .zip archive packages.

You’ll sleep much better at night knowing you have multiple options for taking database backups.

I’m in the middle of writing a post about exporting/importing .SQL files and these plugin shenanigans have spurred me on to continue writing that post.

Edit: Here’s my own manual method of backing up a WordPress database using mysqldump via a command line interface called PuTTY.

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Filed Under: Web Development, WordPress Tagged With: Backup, Duplicator, PHP, Plugin, ZipArchive

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Comments

  1. Mark Miller says

    May 2, 2015 at 5:05 pm

    Thanks for some tips on Duplicator. I was having the same problem on my site and I don’t know how to fix it. Glad that I’ve found your blog.

    Cheers,
    Mark

    Reply
  2. Paul G says

    May 4, 2015 at 10:15 pm

    Thanks Darren I am glad you mention these problems since I am creating my site on GoDaddy Linux hosting. Have considered buying BackUpBuddy but not yet because Duplicator is free and seems to have a good reputation.

    Thanks for this I feel you’ve saved me a potential headache down the road!

    All the best,
    Paul Gregory

    Reply
    • Small Biz Geek says

      December 4, 2015 at 11:31 am

      I have tried BackUpBuddy before but cancelled the subscription. I felt it was overpriced and it still gave me a lot of trouble with timeouts.

      Reply
  3. Michael Lewis says

    November 20, 2015 at 2:11 am

    Legend. Thank you.

    Reply
  4. Massimiliano M. Cucciniello says

    December 4, 2015 at 11:12 am

    Hi Darren,
    thank you very much for your help!
    You succeed where three developers didn’t.
    I am very grateful to you!

    Reply
    • Small Biz Geek says

      December 4, 2015 at 11:23 am

      You’re welcome. The Life in the Grid knowledge base gave me the idea to try something with php.ini.
      The GoDaddy support people said the Duplicator issue had been bothering them for a while. I hope my solution helped them too and they were able to pass the tip onto their customers.

      Reply
  5. Ronald Santizo says

    February 25, 2016 at 7:23 pm

    Thanks, maybe I didn’t use it for duplicator, but I was having the same ZipArchive issue when installing OctoberCMS on GoDaddy and following your advice is now installed and working. Regards.

    Reply
    • Small Biz Geek says

      February 25, 2016 at 9:55 pm

      What’s OctoberCMS? Is that a shared hosting application, a one click install thing? Glad it worked for you.

      Reply
  6. Chris Schondel says

    November 2, 2016 at 10:48 pm

    Perfect solution. I also thought I would share the in Godaddy shared hosting, that under the PHP version you can select “Zip” because mine was unchecked by default. Once I killed the process and refreshed I got a PASS – WOO HOO!!!

    Reply
    • Femi K says

      July 30, 2017 at 11:18 pm

      Excellent suggestion Chris! This works for me. Many thanks

      Reply
    • Ganesh says

      December 15, 2017 at 8:25 pm

      Excellent idea bro..after struggling for 2 hrs, i found your solution. it is just one second job. u r great.

      Reply
    • Davo says

      July 17, 2018 at 4:29 pm

      Thank you for this, Chris!
      This was exactly what my client’s setup needed. 🙂

      Reply
  7. Luke Gibson says

    November 17, 2016 at 12:44 am

    I’ve got a dedicated server, does this solution work for that? I can’t tell.

    Reply
    • Small Biz Geek says

      November 17, 2016 at 9:58 am

      I’m not sure, presently. All I can suggest is that you try it and see. You’re with GoDaddy, I take it?

      Reply
  8. Talon Lister says

    November 17, 2016 at 10:59 pm

    Forgive me, for I’m not the most advanced with this sort of stuff. Quite the beginner. I’m not quite sure how to edit the php.ini file. From what i’ve read, it’s actually called something else in godaddy hosting now, and I’m not able to find it at all. I read a guide on how to edit the php.ini file, and they suggested just creating a new php.ini file with the edits you wanted to make in the public_html folder, but I tried that and it didn’t seem to work for me at all. Still getting the php fail in Duplicator. Help?

    Reply
    • Steve Tran says

      May 17, 2017 at 9:26 am

      I have the same question

      Reply
    • Small Biz Geek says

      July 16, 2017 at 11:35 am

      My php.ini file is in the public_html folder. That is the name of the root server folder under a GoDaddy shared Linux server.

      I copied the php.ini file to my desktop, edited it with Notepad++ and dropped in the extension=zip.so line.

      Reply
  9. Taylor says

    January 12, 2017 at 6:13 pm

    This is awesome, Darren! This is literally the exact issue I was having today and this fixed it. Thank you so much for putting this up and saving me potentially hours of troubleshooting and a massive headache.

    Reply
  10. Patrick says

    February 17, 2017 at 10:28 am

    i configured my own server from jiffybox but this solution is not working. I have checked the info.php file and it says “Phar-based phar archives enabled
    Tar-based phar archives enabled
    ZIP-based phar archives enabled
    gzip compression enabled
    bzip2 compression enabled” but it is still giving me the same error. Any solutions?

    Reply
    • Small Biz Geek says

      February 18, 2017 at 3:31 pm

      I only used this solution for Linux cPanel shared hosting… I’ve never used jiffybox.

      Reply
  11. Saar says

    June 12, 2017 at 8:56 am

    Thanks a lot for writing this article. Saved me 🙂

    Reply
    • Small Biz Geek says

      June 12, 2017 at 7:38 pm

      You’re welcome. Tell me, is Duplicator the only plugin you use for cloning websites? Have you tried any others, like WP Migrate DB?

      Reply
  12. Design Theory says

    July 16, 2017 at 3:25 am

    This was great, thanks for your post. Keeps on giving!

    Reply
  13. Mary says

    September 13, 2017 at 9:40 pm

    Thank you for writing this! Saved me a tech support chat and was able to immediately translate my initial fail into a pass.

    Reply
    • Small Biz Geek says

      September 14, 2017 at 10:14 am

      I’m surprised out many people are finding this to be the solution. I kind of stumbled across it. Are you on GoDaddy too?

      Reply
  14. mick says

    December 1, 2017 at 7:55 am

    hi and thanks for this procedure

    unfortunately i cannot find my php.ini file in my godaddy file manager…

    using filezilla i searched into etc but it isn’t there, and also after having downloaded locally, searching everywhere but nothing…

    do you know where is it located?

    Reply
  15. mick says

    December 1, 2017 at 8:07 am

    an update:

    after having launched phpinfo() I know that my location is:

    /opt/alt/php71/etc/php.ini

    but I cannot access there and so nor to my ini file

    how can i do?

    thanks

    Reply
    • Small Biz Geek says

      December 1, 2017 at 6:18 pm

      I talk about php.ini in the post, not phpinfo.php – You might not need the latter in this case since the Duplicator error reports should tell you whether or not the ZipArchive is enabled.

      Go ahead and create your php.ini file to your public root folder – the same folder that your index.html or index.php is in.

      Reply
  16. Paul G. says

    January 23, 2018 at 6:53 pm

    If your on godaddy hosting its very easy no need to edit stuff by hand just need to know where to go in cpanel.
    its a bit misleading on the main screen scroll down to software and click change php version in the page that opens you will see the version your using and the option to change it, below this you will see an ocean of checkboxes for the different modules you can turn on or off you will find the zip option near the end, check it then click save and rock on. if you want to set your timeouts and file max sized click on switch to php options in the upper right. Hope this helps!

    Reply
  17. Faro says

    February 2, 2018 at 10:43 pm

    It might be helpful.
    If your hosted on Godaddy:
    Cpanel>Select PHP version> Check ZIP > Save

    If your missing zip on php then PHP PEAR Packages>search Zip>Install

    Hope it help.

    Reply
    • Leandro says

      March 9, 2018 at 3:00 pm

      Thank you so much! Much easier and worked perfectly.

      Reply
    • Brandon says

      December 14, 2018 at 3:50 pm

      I did this as well. Worked immediately.

      Reply
  18. mira says

    February 6, 2018 at 12:00 pm

    you saved my day
    i had mini heart attack when it was not working properly…

    Reply
    • RON COMSTOCK says

      February 22, 2018 at 11:30 am

      I can’t find it, using godaddy and cpanel

      Reply
      • Small Biz Geek says

        February 22, 2018 at 11:39 am

        Create it yourself and drop into the public_html folder.

        Reply
  19. Lun says

    February 9, 2018 at 9:32 pm

    Thank you so much to provide the tip!

    Reply
  20. RON COMSTOCK says

    February 22, 2018 at 11:29 am

    I can’t find php.ini in my files, using cpanel

    did the file name change? and where is it now?

    Reply
  21. Pete says

    March 8, 2018 at 11:48 pm

    Thanks, Darren. Three years later and this post is exactly what I needed.

    Reply
  22. Eddy says

    March 19, 2018 at 3:59 pm

    Thanks for taking the time to document this. I found a much quicker solution on my GoDaddy cpanel … in cpanl just go to Select PHP Version, then in the extensions click the box next to “zip”, then save … and viola.

    Reply
  23. Vilian says

    March 24, 2018 at 4:20 am

    Thank you!

    I had updated my php version from php 5 to php 7 (on my local dev machine) and ran into this issue. In my case installing the php7-zip package with

    sudo apt-get install php7.0-zip

    sudo service apache2 restart

    did the trick. (Obviously one would need shell access for this)

    Source:
    https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/php-7-0-ziparchive-library-is-missing-or-disabled

    Reply
  24. Christopher G Mendla says

    April 7, 2018 at 8:17 pm

    Your post saved me a lot of time. All I had to do with the cpanel version I was working with was to got to cpanel, then select php version. From there all I had to do was check the zip checkbox

    Reply
  25. Churchill says

    April 11, 2018 at 2:21 am

    You’re amazing. Thanks brother!

    Reply
  26. peter says

    April 11, 2018 at 11:20 am

    Thanks Chris Schondel for the zip tip and Thanks Darren.

    Reply
  27. Arianna says

    April 27, 2018 at 1:41 am

    Bruh, this comment saved me soooo much frustration. THANK YOU!!!

    Reply
  28. SINA KHARAZI ZADEH says

    May 19, 2018 at 8:49 pm

    Thanks a lot, it works perfectly.

    Reply
  29. tnpds says

    June 12, 2018 at 1:14 pm

    You’re great. Thanks, brother!

    Reply
  30. tnpds says

    November 5, 2018 at 12:17 pm

    I was more than happy to uncover this great site. I need to to thank you for your time due to this fantastic read!! I definitely enjoyed every bit of it and I have you bookmarked to see new information on your blog.

    Reply

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