Migrate WordPress Blog Posts and Their Featured Images

The easiest way to migrate blog posts is to use the built-in WordPress export/import functionality. However, there may be cases when the website owner only wants to export a portion of their posts rather than all of them, and when that’s the case, there is something important to keep in mind.

If you choose an export option apart from “All Content,” the featured images will not be included with the export.

You could always manually add the featured images for sites with a small number of blog posts, but that is tedious and can prove to be a massive task for sites with many blog posts. Here is a quick and easy way to migrate blog posts while keeping featured images in place.

Export Blog Posts With Featured Images

1. Download, install, and activate Export Media With Selected Content (Free)
2. WordPress Dashboard > Tools > Export
3. Select ‘Posts.’ (Note: If you want to import only a subset of your posts, you will need to specify the criteria in this step.)
4. Check the ‘Export Media with Selected Content’ box
5. Click the ‘Download Export File’ button

Import Blog Posts With Featured Images

1. WordPress Dashboard > Tools > Import
2. WordPress > Click ‘Install Now’
3. WordPress > Click ‘Run Importer’
4. Click the ‘Chow File’ button
5. Select your export file
6. Click the ‘Upload file and import’ button
7. Choose the desired settings for the Author(s). (Note: If you do nothing here, the default is for WordPress to try and assign the current Author of the posts.)
8. Import Attachments > Check the ‘Download and import file attachments’ box
9. Click the ‘Submit’ button