Merging a standalone blog into a website

Check to see if you did what is necessary for moving wp.

https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Moving_WordPress

Thanks — I see something about “when your domain name/URL changes”. I guess that sounds like our situation? Hope it’s not too complicated!

Thank you —

Question:

In our website (kirksmith-novelist.com)

— if we click “Import” and then select “WordPress” and then import the XML downloaded from the blog we are trying to incorporate —

— will that work in our case? I did that, and got up to the point of clicking the final “Have Fun” ie submit, button. I was fearful that by doing this, it would overwrite, and essentially, wipe out the website that it was coming into.

I’m thinking of trying these directions (from codex) — but not entirely certain if this is what we need or not?!

If You Want Your Old Site To Still Work
Caution: Make sure you have a backup of your old site’s WordPress database before proceeding!

Part A – Activating Your New Site

Download your entire WordPress installation to your hard drive. Name the folder appropriately to indicate that this is your OLD site’s installation.
Download your database.
Go back to your OLD site and go to options and change the url (both of them) to that of your new site.
Again, download your entire WordPress installation to your hard drive. Name the folder appropriately to indicate that this is your NEW site’s installation.
Download your database once again (but keep the old one). Upload this database to your new server. It will be easiest if you use the same database name and you create a user with the same login credentials on your new server as on your old server.
If you used a different database name and/or user (see previous step), edit wp-config.php in your NEW site’s installation folder appropriately.
Upload the NEW site’s installation folder to your new site. Presto, your NEW site should be working!
Part B – Restoring Your Old Site

On the original server, delete your OLD site’s database (remember, you should have a copy on your local computer that you made at the very beginning).
Upload your OLD site’s installation folder to your original server, overwriting the files that are currently there (you may also delete the installation folder on the server and simply re-upload the OLD site’s files).
Upload your OLD site’s database from your local computer to the server. That should do it!
Another procedure for making copies of posts, comments, pages, categories and custom field (post status, data, permalinks, ping status…) easy to follow:

Install a new WordPress site
Go on old site Admin panel. Here, in Manage > Export select “all” in menu Restrict Author.
Click on Download Export File
In new site go on Manage > Import, choose WordPress item.
In the page that will be shown, select the file just exported. Click on Upload file and Import
It will appear a page. In Assign Authors, assign the author to users that already exist or create new ones.
Click on Submit
At the end, click on Have fun
Note: using this method if there are some articles in new site (like hello world, info page…), these will not be erased. Articles are only added. Using the former procedure the article in new site will be deleted.

will that work in our case?

It should do, yes.

I was fearful that by doing this, it would overwrite, and essentially, wipe out the website that it was coming into.

No. Nothing is removed on the site that you are importing into. Only the other site’s Posts, Pages and images are added to the import site.

Ah, thank you. I guess I will try using the “Import” feature then.

Here is the website:
https://www.kirksmith-novelist.com

in that site, there is a link for “Blog” — this presently links to the blog, which, up till now, was on its own separate domain. We simply want to merge the blog into the website so that the contents of this blog:

https://fictionaboutscience.com/

Will display under the “Blog” button and under the kirksmith-novelist.com domain. In other words, kirksmith-novelist.com/blog will display the blog —- that’s our goal.

If I use the “Import” from kirksmith-novelist — I’m wondering how I can get all of the blog contents to come up under the subdirectory of “blog”?

My head is spinning thinking about it all! Thanks so much for your help.

WordPress doesn’t use sub-directories but you can set up a main posts page called Blog in Settings -> Reading.

OK — I’m going to give it a try. Thank you!

Me again. Hey — it worked really well. Can’t see why anyone would use any of those other longwinded methods to move a WP site???

One hitch though:

Here is the site now with the imported blog in place:

https://www.kirksmith-novelist.com

Click on “Kirk’s Blog” — the imported blog seems to be all there, and looks good, posts are all listed within the Posts section — BUT —one glitch — the menu items running horizontally across the top in the blog section still have the blog’s fictionaboutscience.com URL in them and I can’t see how I can edit that from within this kirksmith-novelist site.

How can the header, and the menu items be edited for the stuff that is now on the Blog section of the site?

Thanks so much for your help!

CORRECTION:

It appears that only the “About This Blog” button is still linking to the other URL.

Still — if down the road I’d like to change the menu in the blog, or the image in its header — Im not seeing where I can do that?

Thanks.

esmi — are you “on call” tonight? The import worked very well, as I mentioned, but I’m stumped how I can do any editing of the blog page from the site where it’s been imported to. I can’t see where or how to get at it.

https://www.kirksmith-novelist.com

(if you click blog — that is all the stuff we just imported)

There is just ONE link in the navigation that still links to the old BLOG domain, not sure of the best way to handle this. Hope my question is making sense.

Thank you! Thank you!

[Moderator Note: No bumping, thank you.]