Moving WordPress to self-host, how to export Media Library

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  sofiedeniet · Member · Mar 31, 2015 at 8:20 am

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  Hi,

  I am a web developper. My client has a wordpress website on your hosting.
  We have created a new WordPress website with a different theme on a new hosting.

  Now I am trying to copy the existing content to the new website.
  I can copy the posts, pages, etc… with the WP XML exporter/importer.

  I also want to copy the Media Library.
  I can not do this with FTP since you don’t allow FTP access.
  I can not do this with a plugin since you don’t allow plugins.

  Could you tell me how to transfer the Media Library?

  thanks,

  Manu De Mey
  X-factory

  The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

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  pmciano · Member · Mar 31, 2015 at 1:52 pm

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  @sofiedeniet

  Check out the following links for a description of how Media Library content is handled during the Export/Import process:

  https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/export-media-files?replies=6#post-1647861

  https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/how-to-export-images-from-media-library-when-migrating?replies=5#post-468742

  Export Your Website’s Content

  If you have additional questions, please let us know.

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  sofiedeniet · Member · Apr 1, 2015 at 7:47 am

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  Thanks for the links. They confirm what I already found out: that (if FTP and plugins are ruled-out) there is no simple surefire way te export a medialibrary. If your Media Library is 300MB (like mine was) then pulling it in through the import/export will surely fail.

  I sort of managed to import my Media Library in the end.
  What I did was to export/import it in several smaller pieces, so in stead of importing all the posts in one go, I imported them one category at the time. The bigger categories I split into dates (from sep 2014 to dec 2014 for example).
  Even with the smaller imports I got blank screens a lot of the time and some parts I had to retry several times.

  Because of the retries sometimes it just gets bugged and the system gives a ‘Media already imported’ message even though it is not true and it will refuse to import the media for those posts.

  So in the end I did about 36 imports and spend about 3 hours and I am left with a Media Library that is only 90% imported..
  If I would have had FTP access, I could have done it in 10 minutes and it would have been 100% correct.

  So when you read “It’s your content; you can do whatever you like with it.” on this page:
  https://en.support.wordpress.com/export/

  It kind of makes you grind your teeth…

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  pmciano · Member · Apr 1, 2015 at 2:01 pm

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  @sofiedeniet

  I understand.

  In the future, a Guided Transfer may give you a better experience for a case like this:

  Guided Transfer

  Regardless, your feedback is appreciated and if you have further questions or concerns, please let us know.

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  sofiedeniet · Member · Apr 1, 2015 at 3:11 pm

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  OK, thanks…