WordPress Importer - When will you need it?
Knowing how to easily copy existing posts to a new website is essential to save you time, when you change your domain name, or change branding etc.
A couple of times now, we have renamed and rebuilt our website. These involve using different themes, rebuilding some main pages, but we always end up using the majority of our old posts. The posts make up the bulk of our traffic, our SEO, even our Social Media posts them. So we had to think of an efficient way to move all of our content over to a new URL, without getting penalized.
If there aren’t that many posts, it’s easy. But when you have piled up years and years of them, now it’s a question of which is the best method? WordPress Importer makes the process much simpler, and should only take a few minutes.
WordPress Importer
Instead of individually copying all of your posts, and ending up with the same author, just use the built-in tool WordPress already has: WordPress Importer. This is very simple, and allows you to export/import: All Content, All Posts, or All Pages, Categories, Custom Feed, etc.
Export Existing Site
First, export the content on your current site. This can be All Content, or All Pages, Posts, Categories, etc. For this example, I am using the WordPress Importer to export All Posts.
1. In your WordPress Dashboard of the old site, go to ‘Tools -> Export‘.
2. Choose either All Content, Posts, or Pages. Leave other options as default unless you have other preferences. Click ‘Download Export File‘ to save the file. You are now done with your old site. You may logout.
Import Posts to New Site
3. Login to your NEW WordPress site.
4. Go to ‘Tools -> Import‘ on the bottom left of your WordPress Dashboard.
5. Select ‘WordPress‘, install the importer by clicking ‘install‘ in the popup, and ‘Activate Plugin & Run Importer‘.
6. Select the file you want to upload (the one you just downloaded), and click ‘Upload File & Import‘.
7. Follow the instructions to assign the author as you prefer. Make sure you check the box that reads ‘download and import file attachments‘, and click ‘Submit‘.
That’s it. No need to overthink this process, it will literally take you less than 5 minutes! We hope this helps you as much as it has helped us in the past.
