Q. Why am I receiving a “empty response” or “cannot download backup file” message when trying to clone a site?
There are two main reasons for a failed clone in ManageWP.
Permissions
When cloning your website, ManageWP sets the permissions of the destination folder to 755 via FTP. Some servers prevent ManageWP from doing this.
You can solve this problem by setting the permissions manually. To do this log in to your site, right click on the destination folder and select file permissions. Set these to 755.
fopen / fsockopen
ManageWP uses fopen and fsockopen PHP functions to download a backup file to your destination server. You should ask your hosting provider to enable these. They’re important for built-in WordPress functions so it’s recommended that you have them enabled.