# A site import is stuck

> Your site import has sat on its upload, "Queued" or "Moving your site in" for too long. What each state means and how to get it moving.

Source: https://veldhost.eu/docs/import-stuck

Last verified: 2026-11-13

You started moving a site in, and nothing has changed for a while. While your browser uploads an archive, the bar under the form shows **Uploading …** with a percentage. After that, the progress panel takes over, and its heading tells you which state the import is in. Each state gets stuck for different reasons.

## Why it happens

| Heading | What is going on | What gets it stuck |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **Receiving your files** | Your upload has arrived, and we are checking it and putting it in place for a worker. This normally takes seconds. | The request was cut off while we were doing that. |
| **Queued** | The files are with us, waiting for a worker (*"usually under a minute"*). | No worker has picked it up. That part is ours. |
| **Moving your site in** | The worker is busy in your site. The line below says which step it is on. | A very large database or archive, or a slow old host during a pull. |

Large sites simply take time. **Importing the database** and **Copying files from your old host** can run for a long while on a multi-gigabyte site, and the **Technical log** keeps adding lines while they do.

## Fix it

1. **Check the page is still updating.** If the line under the heading says *"Your session has ended, so this page stopped updating. The import carries on — reload the page to follow it."*, sign in again and reload. The import itself did not stop.
2. **Open Technical log.** If lines are still being added, the import is working: leave it. While it says **Moving your site in**, you can close the page; it carries on without you.
3. **The upload bar stopped?** Check you are online, then press **Start the move** again. The pieces that already arrived are kept, so the upload carries on from where it stopped. This works after a reload too, in the same browser: choose the same file again, then press **Start the move**. A different file, or one you changed since, starts from the beginning. Pieces that are not used are deleted after a day, so a much later try also starts from the beginning. If you see *"Your session expired while the file was going up"*, reload, sign in and start again. Over 4 GB, or told *"That is more than we can import in one go"*: split the media out of the archive and upload it over [SFTP](https://veldhost.eu/docs/ssh-sftp-access) afterwards.
4. **Stuck on Receiving your files, or on Queued for more than a few minutes?** Press **Cancel this import**, then start the move again. Cancelling here is safe: *"Cancelled. Nothing was changed on your site."* If it sticks again, contact us; a stuck queue is ours to fix. If you leave it, we stop it automatically after 6 hours and it ends as **Import failed**: *"Your upload never finished arriving"* or *"Our import service did not start this import"*, and *"Nothing on your site was changed"*. We are alerted when our side did not start it. An import that was queued with all its files can then be started again with **Try again**.
5. **Stuck on Moving your site in, with no new log lines?** This state cannot be cancelled, because the worker is already changing your site. If it reports nothing for 6 hours, we stop it automatically and it ends as **Import failed** with *"The import stopped reporting progress and was abandoned."*

> **Caution:** Restoring the pre-import restore point replaces the site's current files and database with the state from just before the import.

6. **After an Import failed.** If the panel says *"This import never reached your site, so nothing on it was changed"*, press **Try again**. Otherwise your site's files are unchanged, but its database may already have been replaced, because the import clears the database before loading yours. If the site looks wrong, press **Go to the pre-import restore point** (or **Find the pre-import restore point**) and restore it ([Backups and restore](https://veldhost.eu/docs/backups-and-restore)). Then fix what the red message says and press **Try again**. **Try again** reuses what the import already had: the files you uploaded (kept for 24 hours after the failure) or the same download link, so there is nothing to upload again. To send a corrected backup instead, use **Import again** below the panel. A pull from your old host always starts again from the form, with the login typed again: we use it once and then delete it.

The steps of the move and the formats we accept are in [Move an existing site to veldhost](https://veldhost.eu/docs/move-an-existing-site).

## Still stuck?

Open **Technical log** and copy its last lines. Then [contact us](https://veldhost.eu/contact) with the site name and those lines, or use **Still stuck? Ask support** on a failed import.

## Related

- [Move an existing site to veldhost](https://veldhost.eu/docs/move-an-existing-site)
- [Backups and restore](https://veldhost.eu/docs/backups-and-restore)
- [Upload your site](https://veldhost.eu/docs/upload-your-site)