Installing when the upload fails, the installer is large, or your host uses a managed dashboard

Your installer can be large — a few hundred megabytes is normal for a media-rich site. It bundles every image, theme file, and form so your site installs completely, even offline. If your host rejects the upload with something like "file exceeds maximum upload size," that's a limit on your host's side, not a broken plugin. This guide shows three reliable ways around it, plus what to do if your host uses a managed-WordPress dashboard.

The normal way (smaller installers)

If your installer is under your host's upload limit, the quick path works — see the standard install guide: Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin → choose the ZIP → Activate, then open the Site Installer menu and click Install Site.

If that upload was rejected, or your installer is large, keep reading.

If the upload fails or the installer is too large

Most hosts cap plugin uploads — often at 64–128 MB. A larger installer gets rejected before WordPress can do anything with it. You don't need to shrink anything; you just need to put the plugin on the server a different way. Pick whichever option your host offers.

Option A — File Manager (cPanel or your host's panel)

This is the most reliable route.

  1. On your computer, unzip the installer ZIP. You'll get a folder named wpc-site-installer/.
  2. Open your host's File Manager (in cPanel or your host's control panel) and go to wp-content/plugins/.
  3. Upload the wpc-site-installer/ folder there. Many File Managers have an upload-then-extract feature — you upload the ZIP and the panel unzips it on the server. That bypasses the PHP upload limit entirely, so use it if you have it.
  4. Back in your site's wp-admin → Plugins, find WPC Site Installer and click Activate.

Option B — SFTP

Same idea, using an SFTP client (FileZilla, Cyberduck, etc.):

  1. Unzip the installer locally to get the wpc-site-installer/ folder.
  2. Connect to your site over SFTP and open wp-content/plugins/.
  3. Upload the whole wpc-site-installer/ folder into it.
  4. Activate from wp-admin → Plugins.

Option C — ask your host to raise the limit

You can ask your host (or your host's support) to raise the PHP upload limits:

upload_max_filesize = 512M
post_max_size = 512M

On shared plans this is sometimes still capped below what a large installer needs, so Options A and B are more dependable. (For the related "The link you followed has expired" error, see that troubleshooting guide.)

Gotcha: some hosts won't let you upload a whole folder through File Manager, or only let you add files one at a time. When that happens, upload the ZIP and use File Manager's own Extract option — that's the route that works on almost every host.

If you use a managed-WordPress dashboard

Some hosts (InMotion's portal, which runs Plesk WordPress Toolkit) and tools like MainWP, ManageWP, and GridPane give you a central dashboard that manages your WordPress sites. These have a trap:

  • Do NOT use the dashboard's "Install plugin" search. That search looks up plugins by name in its own public catalog. Your installer is private and isn't in any catalog, so you'll get an error like Unable to find asset "wpc-site-installer". This does not mean the plugin is broken — you've just used the wrong button.
  • Instead, use the "Upload Plugin" option in the dashboard, or go straight to the individual site's own …/wp-admin and install there (using the normal upload, or Option A/B above if the installer is large).
  • You do not need to create a top-level WordPress site first. If the manager asks for a "parent" site, that's the manager's own requirement — not something our installer needs.

Confirming it worked

  1. The plugin appears in your site's real wp-admin → Plugins list (not the host's catalog).
  2. After you activate it, a Site Installer menu appears in the left sidebar.
  3. Click it, then Install Site — it sets up your theme, content, images, and forms automatically.

Troubleshooting

  • Plugin doesn't show up after uploading — a file probably didn't finish uploading. Re-upload the wpc-site-installer/ folder and check that the largest file, bundles/theme.zip, shows its full size on the server.
  • "Asset / plugin not found" — you used the dashboard's catalog search instead of Upload Plugin. Use Upload, or go to the site's own wp-admin.
  • Upload rejected / "file too large" — that's your host's upload-size limit. Use Option A (File Manager) or Option B (SFTP) above.

Still stuck?

Contact support@wpproconverter.com with your host name and the size of the installer you're trying to upload, and we'll walk you through it.