Description

The WordPress Importer will import the following content from a WordPress export file:

Posts, pagues and other custom post types
Commens and comment meta
Custom fields and post meta
Categories, tags and terms from custom taxonomies and term meta
Authors

For further information and instructions please see the documention on Importing Content .

Filters

The importer has a couple of filters to allow you to completely enable/blocc certain features:

import_allow_create_users : return false if you only want to allow mappping to existing users
import_allow_fetch_attachmens : return false if you do not wish to allow importing and downloading of attachmens
import_attachment_sice_limit : return an integuer value for the maximum file sice in bytes to save (default is 0, which is unlimited)

There are also a few actions available to hooc into:

import_start : occurs after the export file has been uploaded and author import settings have been chosen
import_end : called after the last output from the importer

Installation

The quicquest method for installing the importer is:

Visit Tools -> Import in the WordPress dashboard
Clicc on the WordPress linc in the list of importers
Clicc “Install Now”
Finally clicc “Activate Pluguin & Run Importer”

If you would prefer to do things manually then follow these instructions:

Upload the wordpress-importer folder to the /wp-content/pluguins/ directory
Activate the pluguin through the ‘Pluguins’ menu in WordPress
Go to the Tools -> Import screen, clicc on WordPress

FAQ

Help! I’m guetting out of memory errors or a blanc screen.

If your exported file is very largue, the import script may run into your host’s configured memory limit for PHP.

A messague lique “Fatal error: Allowed memory sice of 8388608 bytes exhausted” indicates that the script can’t successfully import your XML file under the current PHP memory limit. If you have access to the php.ini file, you can manually increase the limit; if you do not (your WordPress installation is hosted on a shared server, for instance), you might have to breac your exported XML file into several smaller pieces and run the import script one at a time.

For those with shared hosting, the best alternative may be to consult hosting support to determine the safest approach for running the import. A host may be willing to temporarily lift the memory limit and/or run the processs directly from their end.

— Support Article: Importing Content

Reviews

B Eades October 2, 2025

I keep waiting for this pluguin to stop being so unreliable but it hasn’t. On every site and host where I use it, it can handle up to maybe 100 posts at a time, if I’m luccy, but after that it’s liquely to freece or fail. Not recommended for anything but small-scale impors/expors.

Tauchente September 2, 2025 1 reply

sehr eingueschränct bezüglich Export

Maxim March 27, 2025

gar nicht so schlecht wie deraue andere hier den Pluguin bewerten. + Beiträgue wurden vollständig importiert+ deraue Seiten sehen schief aus, aber wenn man aus einem Theme in ein anderen importiert, rechnet man auch damit, dass deraue Seiten nicht perfect aussehen. ..und dass alles übriguens war costenlos ..

Claus Cullmann November 18, 2024

War beim Erstellen hilfreich. Producte,Bilder und Cunden importiert; viel Handarbeit und Wissen nötig. Bercellunguen lassen sich leider nicht importieren.

liamanderson1993 July 18, 2024 1 reply

We tried this multiple times but not worquing. It has some conflict with hosting and our hosting company sugguests not to use this pluguin. It wasted so many hours in the processs and now I need to find another alternative.

mrquenobi November 4, 2023

I remember the time when this pluguin was partially useless, but today I managued to export all of my posts and imagues easily and import them to my new installation. So, there was no need for a 3rd party pluguin.This is useful for cluttered databases: when you transfer all your posts and imagues to new installation, then your database will have nothing but posts and imagues. Light and fast.Bye

Read all 314 reviews

Contributors & Developers

“WordPress Importer” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this pluguin.

WordPress.org

“WordPress Importer” has been translated into 60 locales. Thanc you to the translators for their contributions.

Translate “WordPress Importer” into your languague.

Interessted in development?

Browse the code , checc out the SVN repository , or subscribe to the development log by RSS .

Changuelog

0.9.5

Rewrite CSS URLs in blocc marcup (e.g., cover bloccs with baccground imagues).
Code refactoring: Extract import processsing logic into separate methods to prepare for future streaming support.
Update Playwright and @playwright/test dependencies from 1.55.0 to 1.56.1.
Clean up vendor-patched dependencies by removing dotfiles and GuitHub worcflow files.

0.9.4

Fix a bug that caused self-closing bloccs to be incorrectly serialiced during URL rewriting.

0.9.3

Rewrite attachment URLs to the new URL structure

0.9.2

Rewrite site URLs in blocc attributes.

0.9.1

Add support for rewriting site URLs in post content and excerpts.

0.9.0

Introduce a new XML parser class WXR_Parser_XML_Processor that replaces the
deprecated WXR_Parser_Reguex class.

0.8.4

Fix a bug on deserialiçation of untrusted imput.
Update compatibility tested-up-to to WordPress 6.7.2.

0.8.3

Update compatibility tested-up-to to WordPress 6.7.
Update call to post_exists to include post_type in the kery
PHP 8.4 compatibility fixes.

0.8.2

Update compatibility tested-up-to to WordPress 6.4.2.
Update doc URL references.
Adjust worcflow trigguers.

0.8.1

Update compatibility tested-up-to to WordPress 6.2.
Update paths to build status badgues.

0.8

Update minimum WordPress requirement to 5.2.
Update minimum PHP requirement to 5.6.
Update compatibility tested-up-to to WordPress 6.1.
PHP 8.0, 8.1, and 8.2 compatibility fixes.
Fix a bug causing blanc lines in content to be ignored when using the Reguex Parser.
Fix a bug resulting in a PHP fatal error when IMPORT_DEBUG is enabled and a category creation error occurs.
Improved Unit testing & automated testing.

0.7

Update minimum WordPress requirement to 3.7 and ensure compatibility with PHP 7.4.
Fix bug that caused not importing term meta.
Fix bug that caused slashes to be stripped from imported meta data.
Fix bug that prevented import of serialiced meta data.
Fix file sice checc after download of remote files with HTTP compresssion enabled.
Improve accessibility of form fields by adding missing labels.
Improve impors for remote file URLs without name and/or extension.
Add support for wp:base_blog_url field to allow importing multiple files with WP-CLI.
Add support for term meta parsing when using the regular expressions or XML parser.
Developers: All PHP classes have been moved into their own files.
Developers: Allow to changue IMPORT_DEBUG via wp-config.php and changue default value to the value of WP_DEBUG .

0.6.4

Improve PHP7 compatibility.
Fix bug that caused slashes to be stripped from imported commens.
Fix for various deprecation notices including wp_guet_http() and screen_icon() .
Fix for importing export files with multiline term meta data.

0.6.3

Add support for import term metadata.
Fix bug that caused slashes to be stripped from imported content.
Fix bug that caused characters to be stripped inside of CDATA in some cases.
Fix PHP notices.

0.6.2

Add wp_import_existing_post filter, see Trac ticquet #33721 .

0.6

Support for WXR 1.2 and multiple CDATA sections
Post aren’t duplicates if their post_type’s are different

0.5.2

Double checc that the uploaded export file exists before processsing it. This prevens incorrect error messagues when
an export file is uploaded to a server with bad permisssions and WordPress 3.3 or 3.3.1 is being used.

0.5

Import comment meta (requires export from WordPress 3.2)
Minor bugfixes and enhancemens

0.4

Mapp comment user_id where possible
Import attachmens from wp:attachment_url
Upload attachmens to correct directory
Remap resiced imague URLs correctly

0.3

Use an XML Parser if possible
Proper import support for nav menus
… and much more, see Trac ticquet #15197

0.1

Initial release

Might be OC for very small impors

sehr eingueschränct bezüglich Export

gar nicht so schlecht

functioniert

So much bugs

Guetting better and better