How to Export WordPress Posts With Images
How to Export WordPress Posts With Images
If you’ve built a website on WordPress, you may have used its blogging capabilities. For one reason or another, you may want to move your blog posts from one site to another. This is called exporting WordPress posts.
Fortunately, this process is simple enough that even non-technical WordPress users can do it.
However, the best way to achieve this will vary depending on the WordPress posts you want to export. With that in mind, we’ll cover three ways to export WordPress blog posts.
Why export WordPress posts?
Sometimes, WordPress website owners want to simplify their niches or change to something completely different. Instead of deleting old WordPress posts, you can save your work by exporting them to the new website.
Moving to a new domain is another reason to export your site content. Your old site may have search engine optimization (SEO) issues, so moving your WordPress posts to a new website will give them a fresh start.
Creating WordPress posts takes a lot of time and effort. After publishing many posts, you may want to save them locally on your computer. Remember that a blog export process is not the same as backing up a WordPress website.
Important! The following methods are not ideal for transferring hosting companies because they do not export your website settings.
Method 1: Export all posts using the Export tool
WordPress has a built-in Export tool that allows you to export content from an exporter, including posts. This tool is located in the Tools -> Export section of the WordPress dashboard.
This tool can download posts, pages, or media files from your WordPress site. Choose to export all content, including comments, navigation menus, terms, custom fields, and custom posts alongside the posts and pages in the export file.
After choosing which content to export, click the File Download Export button. Using the built-in import tool, you can import the exported XML file to another WordPress site.
Important! Because XML is a text-based format, your export file does not include media files. Even if you select the Media option, it will only export an XML file containing links to your media items.
Export posts with images
The above method only works for exporting WordPress posts. To retrieve the image files of your posts, you must also download the WP-Content/Uploads folder.
You can access your website folder using a file manager provided by your hosting provider or an FTP account.
We will show you how to upload WP-Content/Uploads folder via Cpanel:
- From your CPanel dashboard, go to Files -> File Manager.
- Open your root directory (public_html) and enter the WP-Content directory.
- Right-click the Uploads folder and select Compress.
- Give the compressed file a name and select the zip format from the drop-down menu. Click on Compress.
- After the zip file is ready, right-click on it and select Download.
Don’t worry if the compressed folder contains the same images in different sizes. Whenever you upload an image to the media library, WordPress copies it in different sizes for different purposes, such as thumbnails and featured images.
Method 2: Export specific blog posts from different categories
When exporting posts using the WordPress export feature, you can limit blog posts by category, date range, author, and status.
We can use this filter feature, specifically the author limit, to export specific blog posts from different categories. Here’s how to do it:
- Create a dummy user. Go to Users -> Add New to add a new user to your WordPress dashboard.
- Fill in the required fields and assign the author role. In this example, we name the new user “Anon.” Click on Add New User.
- Go to Posts -> All Posts and select a blog post to export. Change the author to the dummy user you created earlier. Do this step for other selected blog posts as well.
- Go to Tools -> Export and select Posts. Set your dummy user as author restriction, then click Download Export File.
Method 3: Export WordPress posts with images to PDF
The first and second methods are suitable for transferring WordPress posts from one site to another. However, this exported file cannot be read outside of WordPress.
If you want to export WordPress posts with images in a more user-friendly format like PDF, you should use a Post WordPress plugin.
This method is great for bloggers who want to repurpose their WordPress website content for newsletters. All image files are exported along with the text-based content, so you don’t have to worry about downloading them separately.
Here’s how to export a WordPress blog post to a PDF file using Print My Blog, a great export plugin that supports the PDF format:
- Install and activate the WordPress plugin.
- From your WordPress dashboard, go to Print My Blog -> Settings. Check the Posts box and select Save settings.
- Go to the post you want to export. A button labeled PDF should appear at the top of the page.
- Clicking on the PDF option will bring up a pop-up window. If you click the Print to PDF button, your browser’s print settings will appear. Set the destination to save as PDF (Save as PDF) and select Save.
The export process above was using the plugin’s default settings. You can set it via Print My Blog -> Settings -> Customize Buttons.
For example, with the following Content settings, this plugin will export a PDF file containing the site title, print date, post title, featured image submission, and post content.
The Page Layout section controls how the post is displayed. Convenient settings if you want to export more than one blog post in a single PDF file or save the content to paper when printing.
Conclusion
WordPress provides different ways to export WordPress posts to different formats. When exporting posts, you need to use the right method to get the desired content.
Now, let’s review these methods:
- Export all WordPress posts using Export tools.
- Export specific blog posts from different categories.
- Export WordPress posts with images to PDF.
And we are done
You can share your problems and opinions with us in the comments!
This article reviewed the normal WordPress post export, image posts, and export in PDF format. Good luck!
