Export WordPress Content: What the File Includes

Someone suggests you “just export the site” before a redesign, or a new developer asks for “an export of your content”. You find Tools → Export, click a button, and a file with an .xml ending lands in your downloads. It is only a few megabytes, which seems far too small for a whole website.

Your suspicion is correct. When you export WordPress content you save the words and structure of the site, not the site itself. That makes the file genuinely useful for some jobs and quite the wrong thing for others, so it pays to know exactly what is in it before you rely on it.

What the export file actually contains

WordPress saves your content in a format called WXR, which is XML with a WordPress flavour. When you export everything, the file holds:

• posts and pages, including drafts, with their titles, text, dates, authors and status
• comments
• categories, tags and other taxonomies
• custom fields, which is where many plugins and page builders keep extra data for each post
• navigation menus built on the classic Menus screen
• custom post types that allow export, such as products, events or portfolio items
• a record of each item in the Media Library: its title, caption, alt text and original web address

Note the last line carefully. The export lists your images and PDFs, but the files themselves are not inside it. That is why the export file is small.

What it leaves out

• The media files. Only their addresses are recorded. More on this below.
• Your theme and plugins. None of the code that makes the site look and work the way it does.
• Settings. Nothing from the Settings menu, the Customizer, widgets or most plugin settings screens.
• User accounts. Authors are listed by name and email so posts can be assigned, but passwords and other users are not included.
• Data in plugins’ own tables. Form entries, shop orders in some setups, redirect lists and analytics records often live outside the normal post tables.

Block themes add a grey area. Some Site Editor content is stored as posts and may appear in the file, but do not count on templates, styles and template parts arriving intact. Plan to check them.

How to export WordPress content

1. Go to Tools → Export. You need an administrator account.
2. Under Choose what to export, pick All content, or narrow it to Posts, Pages or Media.
3. If you chose Posts or Pages, filters appear: categories, authors, a date range and status. These are useful for, say, exporting only last year’s blog posts.
4. Click Download Export File.
5. Rename the file to something you will recognise later, such as the site name and today’s date, and store it somewhere other than your laptop’s downloads folder.

On a large site the export can take a while and occasionally times out. If it fails, export posts and pages separately, or a year at a time.

Using the WordPress import tool

The importer is a free plugin made by the WordPress project. It is offered from the Import screen, so you do not need to search for it.

1. On the site receiving the content, go to Tools → Import.
2. Find WordPress in the list and click Install Now, then Run Importer.
3. Choose your .xml file and upload it.
4. WordPress asks what to do with each author. You can create a new user for them or assign their posts to an existing user. For a business site, assigning everything to an existing account is usually simplest.
5. Tick Download and import file attachments if you want the images and documents copied across.
6. Click the button to start, and wait. Do not close the tab until it reports that it is done.

The same screen lists importers for other platforms too, such as Blogger, Tumblr and RSS feeds, plus a converter between categories and tags.

How media files come across

When you tick the attachments box, the importer reads each media address from the file and downloads the file from your old site. So the old site must still be online and reachable while the import runs. If it has been switched off, or it blocks the request, images quietly fail and you end up with pages full of gaps.

The importer also tries to point images inside your content at their new copies, but check a sample of pages afterwards for any that still load from the old address. If you need the actual files as a set, for a handover or your own records, see our guide to downloading the WordPress media library.

When export and import is the right tool

Exporting is one of several housekeeping jobs covered in our notes on how to manage a WordPress website. It earns its place in a handful of situations:

• Moving a blog into a new site whose design is already built, for example when a redesign is done on a fresh install.
• Merging content from a second, smaller WordPress site into your main one.
• Copying some posts or pages to a test copy of the site; our post on WordPress staging sites explains when a test copy is worth having.
• Keeping a plain archive of your writing that any WordPress site, and some other platforms, can read.

When it is the wrong tool

It is not a backup. If the site broke tomorrow, this file could not bring it back: no theme, no plugins, no settings, no images. A real backup includes the database and all files, which our guide on backing up a WordPress website covers.

It is not a migration. Moving the same site to a new host or domain is done by copying the files and database, so everything arrives exactly as it was. Rebuilding a site from an export file and then reconfiguring every plugin by hand is slower and loses things along the way.

It struggles with page builders. Builder layouts are usually stored with each post and travel in the file, but the builder plugin, its global settings and the theme must already be set up on the new site. Check every important page by eye.

Things that commonly go wrong

• The upload is refused because the file is too large. The server’s upload limit applies here too. Split the export, or raise the limit; see the WordPress upload size limit.
• Running the import twice. The importer usually skips posts it recognises, but menus and other items can come in twice. Import once, check, then fix the gaps by hand.
• Menus look wrong. Imported menus often need assigning to their theme location again, and on block themes may need rebuilding in the Navigation block.
• Links still point to the old domain. Links you typed inside content keep the old address. Check them, especially if the old site will be switched off.

To undo a bad import on a fresh site, the cleanest route is to restore the backup you took just before it. Deleting imported posts one by one is slow and easy to get wrong.

The Tools menu holds a few other utilities besides these two; the WordPress dashboard guide explains what each of them is for.

Frequently asked questions

Can I export just one page from WordPress?

Not with the built-in tool, which works by type, category, author, date and status rather than by single page. You can narrow the filters until only that page is included, or for a quick copy within the same site, use a duplicate page plugin instead. For a single page of text, copying the blocks in the editor is often quickest.

Does the export include my SEO titles and descriptions?

Usually yes. SEO plugins such as Yoast SEO and Rank Math store per-page titles and descriptions as custom fields, which the export includes. They only take effect if the same SEO plugin is active on the new site. The plugin’s general settings, such as sitemap options, are not in the file.

Can I import a WordPress export into Shopify, Wix or another platform?

Some platforms accept the WordPress format for blog posts, and others need a separate tool or a manual copy. Pages built with blocks or a page builder rarely come across cleanly anywhere else. Check the destination platform’s own help pages for what it supports before relying on the export.

Is the export file safe to email or share?

Treat it with some care. It contains unpublished drafts, private pages and the names and email addresses of authors and commenters. Share it only with the person who needs it, through a link you can remove later, and delete old copies you no longer need rather than leaving them in shared folders.

Export, backup or full move: the right choice depends on what you are trying to end up with, and it is easier to decide before any file has been downloaded. If you would like to talk it through first, our WordPress support team can look at the site with you.

Next in this series: Clean Up the WordPress Dashboard Without Missing Warnings