How can I bulk import articles and images in WordPress?

  • Unknown's avatar
    matteomicciche · Member ·

    before advising me to use the import tool or a plugin: WAIT! I give you more details.

    I’m working on a HUGE website. My goal is to move something like 1500 articles from one WordPress installation to another brand new website. I managed to import all the articles easily; at least, all the verbosity. I NEED to have the images too.

    This is what I’ve done so far:

    First, I copied all the wp-content/uploads (via FTP) from Website1-> Website2. Now I have a perfect copy of the wp-contents/uploads in both the WordPress installation. Of course, I don’t have these images on my Website2’s media library, yet.

    I thought: maybe I can export an XML file from Website1 with all the articles and editing it before importing it on Website2. I changed each line with Notepad++ from domain.org/installation1/wp-content/uploads/ to domain.org/installation2/wp-content/uploads/. This method FAILED. I have the articles, but not the images inside them. When I check on the front-end I get

    <img src="">

    like if WordPress didn’t accept the image source.

    Then I think: maybe I need to have all the images in my media library before importing the articles. So I tried in two different ways.

    3A.. I tried with the import tool. I exported an XML file again from Website1 (selecting “Media”) and edited again it changing the location from domain.org/installation1/wp-content/uploads/ to domain.org/installation2/wp-content/uploads/, because remember: I’m building the new website from scratch and I need two working on a new installation. Well, I tried few times but every time WordPress failed to import the images in the library.

    3B. I tried with a plugin (“Add From Server”). This one managed to import some images (I tried with a single month) but it failed with the most. Now I just have like the 20% of the images in a single folder (like wp-contents/uploads/2021/01).

    Please help me! There are something like 30000 photos and I definitely can’t do it manually. Just a clarification:

    I would like to avoid the installation of a new plugin in Website1 because this site is running on an old version of WordPress and most of the plugins don’t officially support old versions.

    I’m not a WordPress guru and I don’t know so much about coding. Please forgive me if a said something nonsense.

    Thank you!

  • Unknown's avatar
    helper-heroponriki · Member ·

    First, I copied all the wp-content/uploads (via FTP) from Website1-> Website2.

    It sounds like your site is not hosted with WordPress.com. It is a site using the open-source WordPress software (from WordPress.org) but hosted elsewhere.

    Because WordPress.com and WordPress.org are two entirely separate entities, we cannot access files or data for sites that are hosted elsewhere, so WordPress.com staff can only assist with sites that are hosted on our servers.

    You can find more information here about the differences between WordPress.org software and WordPress.com: https://wordpress.com/support/com-vs-org/

    The WordPress.org forums are a great resource for sites using the open source WordPress.org software, and you can find support for that at:
    https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting

    You can also reach out to your host for help with this. Since they’re hosting your site’s files, they also have access to those files and could also be able to help you here.

    I hope that helps!

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