Local Migrator – WordPress Download POC

Local Migrator has two parts:

• A WordPress plugin (plugin/local-migrator.php) that exposes authenticated REST endpoints.
• A CLI (lm), packaged as local-migrator.phar, that connects to the plugin and downloads the site (files + database) efficiently.

You install the plugin on a site, copy the command it shows you, and run that command locally.

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1. Install the WordPress plugin

1. Download the latest local-migrator-plugin.zip from the releases page.
2. Install and activate the plugin in WordPress.

2. Install the CLI (PHAR)

Run this installer (macOS/Linux) to place the CLI at /usr/local/bin/lm.

curl -sSL https://github.com/joeguilmette/local-migrator-poc/releases/latest/download/local-migrator.phar \
  -o /tmp/local-migrator.phar && \
chmod +x /tmp/local-migrator.phar && \
sudo mv /tmp/local-migrator.phar /usr/local/bin/lm

lm --help

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3. Run a download

Basic command:

lm download --url=<URL> --key=<KEY> [--output=<DIR>] [--concurrency=<N>]

• --url Site base URL (from the plugin page), e.g. https://example.com
• --key Access key (from the plugin page)
• --output Local destination directory (default: ./local-backup)
• --concurrency Number of parallel file downloads (default: 4)

Example:

lm download \
  --url="https://example.com" \
  --key="ACCESS_KEY_FROM_PLUGIN" \
  --output="./example-backup"

On success, Local Migrator will:

• Stream all wp-content/ files plus the database into a temporary workspace.
• Build a single ZIP archive at <output>/archives/<domain>-<YYYYmmdd-HHMMSS>.zip.
  • The archive contains wp-content/ (with the full tree) and db.sql at the root.
• Remove the workspace and print the final archive path plus transfer stats.

Exit codes:

• 0 – success
• 2 – bad or missing arguments
• 3 – HTTP / network error
• 4 – internal error

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4. Development

These steps are for contributors and release maintainers.

Requirements

• PHP ^8.0 with the cURL and PHAR extensions
• Composer
• humbug/box listed in cli/composer.json (as a dev dependency)

Build the PHAR from source

cd /path/to/local-migrator-poc/cli
composer install
vendor/bin/box compile

The build artifact is cli/dist/local-migrator.phar.

Install locally (for testing)

cd /path/to/local-migrator-poc/cli
sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/bin
sudo install -m 755 dist/local-migrator.phar /usr/local/bin/lm
lm --help

Or run directly without installing:

php dist/local-migrator.phar download --url=... --key=... --output=...

Generate Plugin and PHAR, then publish a release

Use the helper script (scripts/release.sh, requires the GitHub CLI with gh auth login):

./scripts/release.sh

The script builds the plugin ZIP and PHAR, then creates or updates the GitHub release (attaching local-migrator-plugin-<version>.zip and cli/dist/local-migrator.phar). It also installs the freshly built PHAR locally.

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5. Uninstall

• Remove the CLI:

  sudo rm /usr/local/bin/lm

• Remove the plugin:

  • Deactivate it from the WordPress Plugins screen.
  • Delete wp-content/plugins/local-migrator/.