Importer not downloading all file attachments (images) from WordPress.com blog

  • Resolved markellison

    (@markellison)


    13 years, 5 months ago

    Hello fellow WordPressers!

    I’m migrating a friend’s blog https://gregtheoharis.wordpress.com/ to a self-hosted site. I’m building the site locally first. My friend exported used the Export tool on WordPress.com and sent me the .xml file. Back on my local environment, I used the www.ads-software.com Import tool, making sure to check the box asking me whether to include file attachments.

    After the import completed, I found a problem: only some — not all — images from the old WordPress.com posts were imported to my local environment. For example, some images “came through” successfully and now have a source path like this:
    https://localhost/dispatches/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/dscf5085.jpg?w=300

    Other images did not “come through” and have source paths like this:
    https://gregtheoharis.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/1999.jpg?w=300

    I’ve tried redoing the import process a few times just to see if that would make a difference, but it didn’t.

    I’m really hoping I won’t have to go through the old blog manually and download all the images one by one…. Any ideas are very much appreciated!

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
  • Thread Starter markellison

    (@markellison)

    Hmm slight change here. Looks like all the images are downloading but they’ve got that stupid ?w=300 after the .jpg, which is causing problems in the theme I’m using. Any ideas how I can fix this??

    Search & Replace: https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/search-and-replace/ ?

    Thread Starter markellison

    (@markellison)

    Thanks! Perfect!

    Hello there,

    I actually experienced the same original problem. I exported and import the xml file from wordpress.com to www.ads-software.com and not all of the media has been imported. Out of the 448 items only 194 were imported.

    I tried a couple of times but I always got the same result.

    No errors were given while importing. Anyone can help me on this one please?

    Thanks in advance.

    I’m sorry, this topic is far from resolved.

    There is as yet no sure method of exporting all images from a WordPress.com blog and importing them into a self-hosted WordPress blog other than by downloading each image individually and re-uploading each image individually.

    The crux of the problem remains one of extracting all images from the WordPress.com Media Library in the first place.

    The most recent (Nov 23, 2011) WordPress.com support document tells us

    “Note: This will ONLY export your posts, pages, comments, categories, and tags; uploads and images may need to be manually transferred to the new blog. The current version of the www.ads-software.com installation gives you the option to import uploaded files, but the blog you are importing from must be live and serving images properly in order for it to work. So, do not delete your blog until after media files have successfully been imported into the new blog.

    If you are planning to export your content to another blog platform, it’s best to download and save your images from your WordPress.com Media Library before trying to import/upload them into the new blog.”

    The WP Importer plugin, even when the “Import Attachments” box is checked, does not guarantee the importation of all attached images.

    While Search and Replace and Add From Server are both excellent plugins, both depend on the images having been gotten out of the WordPress.com Media Library in the first place.

    HTTrack usually does a good job of mirroring a Web site and its files, but in my current situation it has only managed to retrieve some 445 of the 1386 images in my current WordPress.com Media Library, which means that Add From Server has at best only 445/1386 images to work its magic on.

    This, moving the images as well as the posts, is a fundamental aspect of ever moving a blog completely from WordPress.com to anywhere else, and there is still no well-defined way to do so reliably.

    If there is some method, or plugin, or script for reliably dumping the entire contents of a WordPress.com Media Library outside of WordPress.com, to an individual computer or elsewhere, either from within a WordPress.com account or from the outside like HTTrack attempts to do, I and numerous others still hanging on closed threads on both WordPress.com and www.ads-software.com would dearly love to hear of it.

    Subscribed.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
  • The topic ‘Importer not downloading all file attachments (images) from WordPress.com blog’ is closed to new replies.