Download your site

Updated

You can download a complete copy of any finished build as a ZIP file: every page, image, style and script, ready to put on any static web host. Use it as a backup, before you retire WordPress®, or to move the site somewhere else. Your site is yours.

Get the download

  1. Open the site in the dashboard and find Download a copy (owners and admins).
  2. Click Prepare a download. It packs the live build (or the newest good build if the site isn't live).
  3. Small sites are ready almost at once. Large ones take a few minutes: the page updates by itself.
  4. Click Download.

You can also ask your AI assistant: "prepare a download of the Acme site and give me the link".

Big sites and slow connections

Downloads can be large, so they resume if they're interrupted. Your browser's download list usually offers Resume; download managers do it automatically. From a terminal:

curl -C - -o site.zip "PASTE-THE-DOWNLOAD-LINK"

Run the same command again after an interruption and it carries on where it stopped.

  • Download links work for 24 hours. After that, open the site page again for a fresh link to the same download (resuming still works).
  • Prepared downloads are kept for 7 days.

What's in the ZIP

FileWhat it is
index.html, about/index.html, …Every page, each in its own folder, so addresses stay the same
wp-content/… and other foldersImages, fonts, styles and scripts
_query/…Pages whose address has a query string, like /?p=12 (see below)
404.htmlYour "page not found" page
_redirectsYour redirects, in the format Cloudflare Pages and Netlify read
README.txtWhat the copy contains

Links in the pages point at your public domain, so host the copy on the same domain. Contact forms send to WranglePress's form relay, which only works while WranglePress serves the site: on another host, switch them to a form service.

If WordPress uses addresses like /?p=12 (Settings → Permalinks → Plain), a static host can't tell those pages apart: it ignores everything after the ?. So each one is saved in a _query folder (/?p=12 becomes _query/p-12/index.html), and the links between your pages are updated to match. Redirects from such addresses are left out of _redirects, because static hosts would apply them to the whole path; links to them go straight to where they redirected.

Links from other websites to the old ?p= addresses will show the page at the path instead, usually your home page. To keep them working, switch WordPress to another permalink setting and run a build before downloading.