How to Migrate (Export and Import) Posts and Comments Files From One WordPress Blog to Another

First, let me give you a little bit of background regarding why have I written this post for you today:

When I began blogging (online) a couple of years ago, I felt a bit weird about having a blog (or any site for that matter!) in my own name.  It just felt funny to me and even though I could see that there were already many people with blog sites in their own names, I just wasn’t comfortable having one at that point in time.  I guess it was just a bit too “out there” for me at the time and I simply felt too self conscious to go down that path.  I did go and buy my domain name though (www.kyliedoak.com), I just didn’t use it for quite a while!

It seems silly now, however, that was how I felt at the time (and I bet I’m not the only one who has felt like that!).

So I was more than happy back then to have a free WordPress.com account and blog using that.  At that point in time though, I had no idea that I didn’t “own” that site (more about this in another post).

Fortunately for me, there haven’t been any issues with my free site, however, I didn’t want to risk losing my blog posts and comments at any point, hence, the decision to migrate them from my free WordPress site to my hosted WordPress site that I DO control.

To migrate content (including posts, comments, pages, images, custom fields, categories, tags) from one blog site to another, is really a very simple process once you know what to do (aren’t most things?!). 

** Please note:  this process does not move the themes, plugins etc.  It only moves the content. **

To be perfectly honest, I’ve been putting off doing this for a very long time because I was so worried that I might lose either the information that I was wanting to migrate to the new blog, or that the information on my new blog would be overridden by the “old” information!

Either scenario would have been a disaster, or so I thought, hence this task has been put off and put off for such a long time.

Fortunately, I’ve found the process to be very simple (better late than never, hey?!) and have now successfully migrated all the content from my free WordPress.com blog, to my hosted WordPress.org blog (this one you’re on right now, in fact).

Okay, here are the steps you need to take to migrate (export and import) files from one WordPress blog to another:

**  Before you start though, make sure you have an up to date backup of all your files for both sites.   **

1.  Log in to the dashboard of the site that you are wanting to migrate files FROM.

2.  Go down to the “Tools” area in the dashboard (down the left hand side of the page) and click on it.  This will open up and you’ll see a list of options.

3.  Click on “Export” from this list.
**  You can choose to migrate the posts from “All Authors” (some blogs have guest authors or more than one admin person), OR you may only want to export posts that a particular person wrote.  In my case, I am the only author on my blog, so it didn’t matter that I left the option as “All Authors”. **

4.  Click on “Download Export File” (an XML file will be created containing the content of your site).

5.  Then you have to save this XML file to your computer.
**  To make it easier to find, I suggest creating a folder on your computer specifically for this file.  For example, I created one called “posts and comments from other blog”.  You can call yours whatever you like, however, make sure that it’s something that you’ll be able to find again easily. **

6.  Once this XML file has been saved to your computer, log in to the dashboard of the site you want to Import the files TO.

7.  Go down to the “Tools” area in the dashboard (down the left hand side of the page) and click on it.  This will open up and you’ll see a list of options.

8.  Click on “Import” from this list.
**  You’ll see a list of systems/platforms other than WordPress where you can Import files from **

9.  Scroll down the page and find the “WordPress” link.

10. Select “Browse” to locate the XML file on your computer.

11.  Double click the XML file once you’ve found it.

12. Select “Upload File and Import”.
**  You can choose to assign these previous posts to an existing user in your new site, OR, you can recreate the previous user from the original site.  There is no right or wrong here, it’s completely up to you how to want to do this part. **

13.  Select “Download and Import File Attachments” (images etc).

14.  Select “Submit”.
**  You’ll then see confirmation that your content has been imported from the old site to the new site (there is a list of posts and the number of comments attached each of them etc).  **

… and now you can breathe. 

Congratulations!  It’s all done!

If you found this information helpful, please share it with your followers, friends and fans.  Thank you.

Tagged as: export and import content, migrate, migrate content, migrate posts and comments, wordpress blog, wordpress content