Whether you need to add demo content to your new theme, duplicate your entire site, or migrate your WordPress posts to a new site, understanding the operations of Import & Export are key to successfully moving data without breaking everything.
Export Files from WordPress
After logging in to your Admin Screen, navigate to the Tools menu item and click Export (Tools > Export). It will bring you to the following screen.
Depending on what you want to export, you can select one of three options:
- All Content
- Posts
- Pages
For this example, we’ll pretend we need to export all of the content of the site.
** Please note that this function will not export themes, plugins, or settings. **
Select All Content and click the Download Export File button. The saved file will be a .XML file and will be immediately ready for import to any WordPress site!
Import Files into WordPress
Now that you have the proper .XML export file, you can import it into WordPress by navigating to the Tools menu item and click Import (Tools > Import).
As you can see above, WordPress allows for many different content types to be imported from different CMS platforms such as Blogger, LiveJournal, and even Tumblr.
** Please note that importing an export file from the same WordPress install may result in duplicate content! You’ve been warned! **
To import a WordPress .XML file, click the WordPress tool. If you have the default install, WordPress will ask you to install the importer plugin.
After installing and activating the plugin, select the .XML file that you exported and click Upload File and Import. The plugin will unload all of the content from your old site onto your new site!
If you wanted to import any of the other content types, follow the same steps above and be sure you have the correct file before importing!
Congratulations! You now know how to export the contents of your WordPress site and add it to another site!
