Today we are going to look at how to export and import data from one WordPress website
to another.
To put it differently, you can use the Import and Export options to find a new house for
your content on WordPress.
If you decide to export, your site's content is downloaded into an XML file that you can
then import to another WordPress site.
If you are ready to export, make your way to Tools and then click on Export.
Below Choose what to export, you can decide to export all content or only posts or only
pages or only media.
Let's select All content and then click on Download Export File.
And now we can go ahead and save the XML file to our computer.
This is a fresh installation of WordPress with no posts, no media and no pages.
And I would like to import the XML file from our previous site into this new site.
So make your way to Tools and click on Import.
And we are after the WordPress Importer right at the bottom.
So let's go ahead and click on Install Now.
And when it is installed successfully, we can click on Run Importer.
And now we can choose the XML file that we exported from our other website.
And then click on Upload File and Import.
To import media successfully, remember to select Download and Import File Attachments.
Please also note, uattached media in the Media Library that has not been embedded into
a post or page will not be included in the XML export file.
Now we can go ahead and click Submit.
And this may take a few seconds.
And now we can go and check out everything that has been imported.
So let's make our way to Posts.
Here are all the posts from our other website.
All the media.
All the pages.
All the comments to posts.
And because it's the same theme, we can make our way to the Site Editor.
And we'll notice that our navigation menus, as well as our templates, and our header and
footer template parts have transferred over from the other website.
If the website you are importing to has a different theme than the one you are exporting
from, you will first need to install and activate the original theme on your new site.
Please note, when you transfer content to a new website, it does not include the site's
design, themes, or plugins.
But you can use a migration plugin for that if you were interested in transferring the
entire site.
When you go to Import, you would have noticed there are other systems you can import posts
or comments from, such as Blogger, Live Journal and even Tumblr.
There is also an option or plugin to convert existing categories to tags or vice versa.
I do hope you feel more comfortable now using the exporting and importing tool.