How to Export WordPress Posts With Images

If you are wondering how to export WordPress posts with images,  then you have come to the right place.

If you need to transfer the blog post with their featured image and internal placed images, but it is not possible with the wordpress default importer or exporter. The default export and import feature only export posts and pages in an XML file, a text file, and only puts the images URL in the file.

You can manually put the featured images later, but it is tedious work, and if you have a large database of posts, then it is so much work, plus there are chances of error.

So, we will learn in this article how to export WordPress posts with images. The method is relatively easy, and you don’t need any technical knowledge to follow the tutorial. So let’s get started

Note: Export is not a backup, so before proceeding with the tutorial, take a backup of your site to be on the safe side if anything goes wrong.

Export WordPress Posts With Images

As we discussed earlier, wordpress has its built-in Tool, which is used for exporting and importing wordpress pages and posts. Still, it has a limitation as it can’t export the blog post with featured images and images placed within the article.

So here, we will use a plugin to modify the functionality of the default wordpress importer and exporter tool.

Navigate to WordPress dashboard and Go Plugin > Add New and search for “Export media with selected content” once you find install and activate it.

Then Navigate to Tools > Export

Here, you will find different options to select from, but our concern is with a blog post. So, choose Posts and tick the “export media with selected content” box.

Now click on the Download Export File. It will download the backup of your post with the featured images and all the images in the blog.

Note: If you have a large site and many blog posts, try to export the blog post in 2 o 3 batches by selecting the date range as something during import large file can not be uploaded due to timed out issue, so it is recommended to export the blog post in batches.

Import WordPress Posts With Images

Once you export the blog post with featured images from your old wordpress site.

In your new site, Navigate to Tool > Import and import the earlier exported file.

Doing so will import the blog post with their featured image to your new website.

Problem with Exporting WordPress Post with Images

If you do every step correctly, there might still be a chance of error, so below, we will discuss the 2 most common mistakes in exporting your wordpress blog post with featured images and images.

1) The Theme is doesn’t attach the media to your blog post or page

Usually, when we upload the image to the blog post, it is attached to the blog post, but some themes don’t attach the images to the blog post and pages.

So when we export the blog post, even with the Plugin, it will only export the text and not the images as they are not attached with the blog post.

To solve this issue, first, check whether my theme attached the images to the blog posts or not. So for this, Navigate to Media Library and look for the “uploaded to” column in the “list” view.

If it is attached to the blog post, you don’t have to do anything if it is correct, but by default, the images are not attached to the blog post.

Then the best option is to change your theme to get the functionality of automatically inserted images to blog posts. The default wordpress theme can also do the job.

Once you change the theme, update all the blog posts, and you will be able to see in the “uploaded to” column the images will be attached to the blog post.

2) The Old Exported Site is Not Live While Importing the Blog Post to New Site

If you export the wordpress blog post using the default wordpress exporter, it will only export the text and only the image URL.

So once you import the file to your new website, the importer goes to each image location from the URL and downloads it to the media library.

If you export the blog post using the default exporter and take down the old site, when you import the file in your new website, it will not fetch the images from the URL in the XML file as you have taken down the old website.

So, if you plan to use the default wordpress exporter for exporting wordpress blog posts with featured images and other images, don’t take down your old site before importing the exported file to your new website.

Note: We recommend using the Plugin for exporting the blog post with images as it will not require the old site to be live to import the blog post with images.

How to Export Specific Blog Posts in WordPress

If you want to export a specific category post, what will you do?. Suppose you have 20 blog posts and want to export only 10 posts.

So for this, first add a new user to wordpress by navigating to User > Add new, then create a dummy user having an author role.

Name the New User whatever you want, generate a password, and save it.

Once you are done creating the new User, go to the posts and change the author of every post with the new author you have just created and update posts.

Once done, Now go to the Tool > Export and select “Posts,” but under the post, option select the new User in the Author box and tick the “Export media with selected content” checkbox.

Now export the file, and it will only export the post assigned to the new User, which will help you if you need to export only specific blog posts.

FAQ(Export WordPress Posts With Images)

Conclusion

Exporting your wordpress post and pages is simple by using the default wordpress export and import feature but is only recommended if you only want text as the featured image and the images within the article are not exported using this method.

Hence we recommend using the Plugin mentioned in this tutorial to ease your work. Hopefully, after reading our guide on how to export wordpress posts with images, you are able to export your website blog posts with images

But still, if you have any confusion, you can ask via comment, and we are happy to help you out.