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Your Wild Apricot archive won't parse or import

You uploaded a file for your Wild Apricot website content, and MapleGather says it doesn’t look like the right kind of archive, found nothing in it, is over the size limit, couldn’t finish reading it, or won’t let you accept items yet.

What’s happening

Section titled “What’s happening”

MapleGather reads your website content from an archive you create with a tool called HTTrack — it doesn’t visit your Wild Apricot site itself. A few things can go wrong at this step:

  • “That doesn’t look like an HTTrack archive.” The uploaded file is missing the folder structure HTTrack creates — this usually means the wrong file was zipped, or the archive wasn’t produced by HTTrack.
  • Zero pages, blog posts, or forum threads detected. This usually means HTTrack was pointed at an admin-only area instead of your public site, or captured very little before stopping.
  • “… is larger than the 5 GB upload limit.” Your .zip is over 5 GB, the most MapleGather accepts in one upload. It was refused before any of it was sent.
  • “… can’t be uploaded because its file type isn’t accepted here.” The file you chose isn’t a ZIP. Choose the ZIP file HTTrack created.
  • Any other message above the drop zone names why the upload didn’t start or didn’t reach file storage (session expired, a missing permission, a read-only account, storage not responding). Do what it says, then choose the archive again.
  • “Couldn’t finish reading the archive.” MapleGather started parsing but hit a problem partway through — this can happen even on a valid, correctly zipped archive.
  • “We’re still finishing the scan of this archive.” You tried to accept items before MapleGather finished reading the archive — this clears itself once reading completes.
  • Your upload expired before parsing started. If you waited too long between uploading and selecting Start parsing, the upload can expire and needs to be redone.

How to fix it

Section titled “How to fix it”
  1. Confirm you zipped the entire folder HTTrack produced, not just a file inside it — the archive needs HTTrack’s folder structure intact.
  2. Re-run HTTrack against your Wild Apricot site’s public address (not an admin login page), let it finish, and zip the output again.
  3. If nothing was detected, check that HTTrack actually captured pages before it stopped — a very short run can produce an archive with little or nothing in it.
  4. If the archive is over 5 GB, narrow HTTrack’s scope before re-zipping — exclude large media folders, limit how deep HTTrack crawls, or capture your site in smaller sections and import each one separately.
  5. If you see “Couldn’t finish reading the archive,” select Try again first — a transient read can fail on an archive that’s otherwise fine.
  6. If your upload expired, select Choose a different archive and upload it again, right before selecting Start parsing.
  7. If you see “still finishing the scan,” wait a moment and try accepting again.

If that didn’t work

Section titled “If that didn’t work”

If you’ve tried the steps above and a properly zipped HTTrack archive still won’t parse, capture your site in smaller pieces: re-run HTTrack on one section at a time, zip each output, and import each archive separately. Any page that still doesn’t come across can be recreated in MapleGather’s website editor — see Create a web page. Keep in mind this import is lossy by design — some things like gadget settings and navigation menus never come across, even from a valid archive; that’s expected, not a failure.

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