Four Plugins to Import Content into WordPress Blogs

Users of WordPress can import content from other content management systems including posts and most features, enabling you to quickly transfer posts or improve functionality within your WordPress site. There are several plugins available that you can use to achieve this.

1. WordPress Importer. The WordPress Importer plugin imports posts, pages, comments, custom fields, categories, tags, authors, and terms from custom taxonomies. Exporting a very large file may result into an error such as “Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted.” You can solve this by manually increasing the limit of your host’s memory limit for PHP. If you don’t have access to the php.ini file, you have to break down the exported XML file into smaller files and run the import script one at a time. If you use shared hosting, consult your hosting provider to know the most secure and safest way to import data.

2. WP All Import. The WP All Import is one of the most powerful plugins that lets you import any XML or CSV file to your WordPress. Importing using this plugin is simple and easy since it involves only four steps and it has an intuitive drag-and-drop interface. You can use this plugin to build an online store with a datafeed, display live stock quotes, build a real estate portal, and more. Version 3 of this plugin can import files of any size and in an unlimited number of records. It can import files of 100mb and larger, depending on your hosting account.

The Pro version of WP All Import offers additional features for $99. These features include: Import to Custom Post Types, Cron Job/Recurring Imports, Import data to Custom Fields, Import files from a URL or FTP server, and Execution of Custom PHP Functions on data.

3. WP Ultimate CSV Importer Plugin. The WP Ultimate CSV Importer Plugin can import any CSV file as a WordPress post, page or custom post type. Use your offline data as a blog or web content. You can import everything from a CSV file, or let the plugin help select which data to import and which to discard. It is useful for authors who keep offline data, price catalog, database, inventory records, and any other data sheet who want to publish these information to visitors.

4. HMTL Import 2. The HTML Import 2 is a plugin that imports well-formed static HTML files into WordPress pages or posts. PHP 5 is required to run this plugin. It reads HTML files as XML and copies the contents of specific tags into different WordPress fields. It is important that the files contain tags that are properly nested. If you are importing as pages, the hierarchy of directories will be maintained. Directories with specified file types will be imported as empty parent pages, otherwise they will be ignored. Once the import is done, the importer will display a list of Apache redirects to transfer visitors from the old site to the new WordPress permalinks.