What’s the easiest way to transfer blog content from an old blog to a new one in a different location?
I’ve always been asked that question but I never really tried doing that until recently,when I decided to merge 3 separate blogs into one.
The easiest way to transfer existing blog content from one blog to another is by using the “Export” function in WordPress. By doing this, you export all existing data (posts, pages, comments, dates, categories and authors) to an external XML document, which you can save to your computer.
Once you’ve saved your file, log into the WordPress blog you want to transfer your content to, and click on “Import”. You’ll see a few options you can choose from, but for transferring from one WordPress blog to another, select the last option.
Then, select the XML file on your computer and click on “Upload File and Import”
The process should go smoothly, and you will now have all the exported content in your new blog according to the categories you have specified. Your comments on each post will also be retained.
Only uploaded images aren’t transferred with this method. You’ll need to manually transfer the images via FTP and update the links for each image used. If the image source is linked to an external source like Flickr or Photobucket, it should appear on your posts as it did in the old blog.
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Great tutorial Gobala, just what I needed to know since I want to sell one of my blogs. I was already worried on how to transfer to a new buyer.
I have found two ptoblems (bugs ?) using this method. The first is that the size of the xml file is limited to 2 megas. My file is yet 800 ko big, after 8 months… How do you manage very big blogs ?
The second problem is that parents et children categories or pages are not well treated. One category has is own children, the next has not. Do you have an explanation on that problem ?
And thanks for your tuto.
If you’re selling the blog, you can just use cpanel to transfer everything including the WordPress files themselves.
This tutorial is more for taking the content OUT of one blog and putting it on another, assuming that you would delete the original blog, otherwise you’ll end up with duplicate content.
@ Gobala: cool, I wasn’t aware of this feature. To be honest I don’t use all features in cpanel and it looks I need to learn some more.
Thanks Gobala,
I read this a couple of days too late…I won’t even tell how I just did a transfer!
I have one other blog to do so this little tip will save me a tonne of time, thanks.
This is a good outline, and I do applaud Automatic for including the Export/Import functions. However, the file size problem is a big issue … I find no way to adjust this, even tinkering with the code, so it’s useless for anyone with more thna a mini-blog … it seems like such a small extra thing to allow the user to ask for other size limits. The failure to bring along the images is a big issue also … if you have a couple thousand posts with one or more images each you have a big task ahead of you.
Seems like a really fertile field for someone who writes plug-ins … instead of yet another avatar selector or some other window dressing toy, why not a decent export/import function that will actually _move_ a blog, not scattered pieces of it?
there is problem, if the xml file > 3MB
i can not upload the file
I’ve been searching for an easy way to move one of my blog contents to a new one. Good post.
For the last few days, I’ve been looking (on and off)
for a way to move one of my blogs from domain.com/blog
to domain.com – without losing the link value of
incoming links.
I get the idea that this method will move the
content but you’d have to deal with the incoming
links via another method such as adding a series of
301 redirects to your htaccess.
Agree/disagree? Is there a better way to achieve
both goals?
TIA
Gary
@ Gary: good question. I think you can actually point your traffic forward via a redirect through htaccess. This would probably be your best bet anyway.
The best thing would be to talk to your host but I really don’t see any other option right now.
Why someone would need to transfer the content and delete old blog – If I am thinking rightly – Can I use this heavily while changing the hosting?? I think so but would need your inputs GObAla.