Last month I combined two of my blogs into one. I was frustrated with the process and with finding good information on the best way to merge the blogs, so I created this step-by-step tutorial to save others from the same fate.
For the sake of consistency, I’m going to refer to the blog that you’re moving as the “old” blog, and the blog you’re moving that content to as the “new” blog.
Note that this process worked for me and should work for you, but I can’t make any guarantees.
Why merge or combine blogs?
There are a couple reasons you’d want to combine your blogs. Maybe you’re tired of running multiple blogs and they’re close enough in subject matter that it makes sense for them to be together. That’s what happened with me. I added everything from my personal blog to my climbing blog, since pretty much everything I wrote about on my personal blog was about climbing.
I also liked the idea of getting more traffic to the climbing blog from those extra posts. I’d rather have Z (X + Y) traffic on one blog than X and Y traffic on two different blogs.
Note: I’ve since created a new personal blog if you’re interested.
[Click the images for the larger versions.]
1. Change the permalink structure on your old blog
You want the permalink structure (Google “wordpress permalink structure” if you don’t know what I’m talking about) to be the same for your old blog as for your new blog. If they’re already the same, that’s great. If not, you’re going to want to change the permalink structure of your old blog.
Do this by logging into WordPress and going to Settings > Permalinks.
2. Export your old blog
If you haven’t already, login to WordPress on the old blog. Then in the WordPress dashboard, go to Tools > Export.
Export the old WordPress blog
On the export page, select which things you want to export. You have three choices: All content, Posts only, and Pages only:
The stuff on the Export page
Once you’ve made your selection, hit the Download Export File button and save the file to a place where you’ll be able to find it later.
Note that this only saves your text and does not save your images! That’s in a later step.
3. Import your old blog to your new blog
Login to WordPress on the new blog and go to Tools > Import:
Import the old blog to the new blog
Once you’re on the import page, select the WordPress option:
The import page
A screen will pop up that will instruct you to download the WordPress importer plugin:
Install the plugin
Click the orange Install Now button.
Then click Activate Plugin and Run Importer on the next page:
Activate the plugin
On the next page, which looks like this…
Choose what you're importing and import it
…click the Choose File button, select the export file that you saved in step 2, and press the Upload File and Import button.
This will take you to the Assign Authors page. Create a new user. I’ll go over the reason for this in a bit. Also check the Download and Import File Attachments button, and then hit the Submit button.
You’ll then see a page that says, “All done. Have fun! Remember to update the passwords and roles of imported users.”
All of your text (posts, comments, and/or pages, depending on what you chose to import) from your old blog is now on your new blog. Woo hoo!
4. Download (via FTP) your images and other media
Use an FTP client (I use Filezilla, which is free) to download the content in your http://www.YOUR-DOMAIN.com/wp-content/uploads/ folder. Unless you’ve specified differently, this is where all of your media (including any images, PDFs, video, or audio) has been uploaded. Download the whole /uploads folder to your computer.
How to use an FTP client like Filezilla is beyond the scope of this tutorial. If you don’t know how to do it, Google “ftp YOUR-HOSTING-COMPANY.” So for example, if your web hosting company is HostGator, Google “ftp hostgator” and you’ll find the info you need. You can also call your hosting provider to get more information.
5. Upload (via FTP) your images and other media
Now you’re pretty much going to do the reverse of what you just did. In Filezilla or whatever you use, upload the /uploads folder of your old blog to the /wp-content/ folder of your new blog.
All of the media from your old blog is now online at your new blog. The problem is that any posts with images, etc. in them still look to your old blog’s location (the old blog’s /uploads folder) for the images. In the next steps, we’ll make it so that the source of the images (and other media) is the new blog, not the old blog.
6. Download, install, and use the “Search and Replace” plugin
In the WordPress dashboard of the new blog, go to Plugins > Add New. Search for the “Search and Replace” plugin and install it:
Install the Search and Replace plugin
Once the plugin is installed and activated, in the WP dashboard go to Tools > Search and Replace.
In the “Search In” section, check the box next to “Content.”
Below that, you’ll see “Search for” and “Replace with” and then a form field after each. In the “Search for” field, type in http://www.OLD-BLOG-DOMAIN.com/wp-content/uploads and in the “Replace with” filed, type in http://www.NEW-BLOG-DOMAIN.com/wp-content/uploads.
Everything filled out
Obviously, you want to insert your domain names there. If you’ve got your blogs to show or not show the www. when you go to them, make sure you include (or don’t include) that www.
Then hit the Go button, and you should see a page that looks something like this:
Successful search and replace
Congratulations! All of the stuff from your old blog is now over on your new blog! But there’s still some housekeeping to do…
7. Tidy up imported posts
In the WordPress dashboard of the new blog, go to Users > Users. Remember how you made it so that all of your imported posts have new different author? This is why: We’re going to go through the imported posts and make sure they’re in the right category, have the right tags, etc. If you don’t care about the categories that your new posts are in or the tags they have on your new blog, you can skip this step because you’re done.
So on the users page, click the number at the far right end of the “new” author/user:
Click the number to the far right end of the user's name.
This will take you all of the imported posts. Use the Quick Edit feature for each post and change whatever you need to (category, tags, etc.). Or maybe there’s a post or two that you need to delete. Have at it.
Final words
Whew, it’s over! Hopefully that all worked out for you.
An optional final step would be to use one of the redirect plugins on your old blog so that anyone looking for something on your old blog (like if they follow a link to something on your old blog), they’ll get redirected to your new blog. You could also contact the site owners of any sites that linked to your old blog and ask them to change their links.
Good luck!
- What other tips do you have for people who are merging blogs?
- Have you ever combined blogs? If so, was it a painful process?
- Do you plan on merging blogs in the future? If so, why?
And don’t forget to check out my new Infographic Academy before the price goes up!
{ 41 comments… read them below or add one }
This is really cool information, I have voted for this on blokube because it’s informative and I found it useful.
Thanks for sharing and more grease to your elbow.
Nice tutorial, I may be doing something similar soon, Personally, I prefer the redirect, but that’s me.
Asking bloggers to relink is a bad idea, it’s unprofessional.
I think it’s very important that you use 301 redirects on all the pages of your old blog, to the equivalent pages on your new blog. If you fail to do this, any link juice you have gathered from your old blog is getting sent to nowhere land. You’re really killing all the organic traffic you gained from your old blog. I haven’t looked into any automated ways to do this, but I’m sure there must be some kind of nice and tidy plugin that will do this for you.
I merged three blogs into ProductiveWriters.com. When I say I, I really mean my Wordpress guy who I paid to do it. He was able to do some sort of global 301 redirect for all of the pages on the old blog to the corresponding pages on the new blog. It worked well.
I was just trying to do this for a friend of mine. The blog was initially set up as a MU blog for some reason—probably because there’s a gallery template attached—back in 2009. I backed up the database and updated Wordpress and the theme but because it’s such an old multi-user setup, the menus aren’t available in the dashboard. I’m kind of stuck without having the editor, plugins, settings or anything else. Any suggestions?
This is a great tutorial, thanks. It is definitely easier to use this method rather than managing a bunch of blogs separately. Have to agree with Dennis on the re-linking, though.
It is a very nice and informative tutorial.Thanks for sharing your information on how to merge multiple wordpress blogs.You well explained the post with screen shots.
Thank you for the step by step instructions. This will save me a lot of trouble while merging blogs in the future. Bookmarked this page.
I had three different blogs. Then it got too much and I did the same. I took the best features of every blog and started doing them on my main blog. I like it and somehow, like with you, they correlated and I now have a richer blog. I haven’t thought of importing them into one. But, that was so long ago, that I don’t think it’ necessary.
great tips. I actually have 4 sites. 2 of them are my personal blogs and sick and tired of updating them regularly. This is something useful. I want to merge them so badly to make a one update per day and not exhausted in updating them all.
I still can’t underatand what for to have several blogs. Isn’t it better to have one and promote it, and update. You create problems just for yourself. Besides, readers won’t jump from one blog to another looking for your updates…
Great post. I don’t have wordpress, but great info to know in case I run into someone that does, I can refer them to this post. I don’t know how people run two or more blogs, I have enough of a time with one.
Thanks for the step by step instructions Tristan, as this helps greatly with SEO … not only preserving it but getting “newly” established exposure out as well.
Great Informative POST.
This really a very easy and simple step to merge multiple blogs. And also you have explained it very well and in simple word that any one can easily get it understand completely especially NEWBIE.
Thanks a lot for sharing such a useful post.
Have a great day.
This is a straightforward and understandable tutorial Tristan – as I would have expected from you. Thanks!
Do you know how it behaves if you have a post on either site that have the same slug (permalink)? How does WordPress handle that? Does it catch it in the import process?
I didn’t heard abt to Combine Multiple WordPress Blogs, It’s new information for me thanks for posting…….
This is a good tutorial. The 301 redirects are important so you don’t waste your traffic and I assume that it would prevent google from downgrading your site due to duplicated content.
Great step-by-step. However, I have a question. After uploading the “uploads” folder and changing all references with that plugin, I see the images in my posts. However, when I go to Media in the Admin area, I don’t see any images. Any clues why this is happening?
Also, is there any way to ensure that the featured image on each is is retained?
Thank you, jim
Thanks for the step by step guide, this might be easier than the one I used before. That one took so much work. But it did work, so all is good and well. Especially the 301 redirect, that can really hurt our sites if we don’t manage it properly.
This is a new information to me. Thank you for this great tutorials. A step-by-step guide on how to export and import blogs.
Must admit that its a very useful tutorial. Great job.
Only one thing is missing – 301 redirection. Until and unless you do it, it will seem like duplicate contents to Google and hence chances are that the new blog will get penalized.
I just wanted to mention that for those users who are running a WordPress Network, the Search and Replace step has one slight modification. Since the network sites all use one installation of WordPress, there is no wp-content/uploads directory. Instead, each sub-site has an .htaccess redirect to the blogs.dir directory.
Anyway, the Search and Replace step for Network users needs to search for: http://www.OLD-DOMAIN.com/files and replace with: http://www.NEW-DOMAIN.com/files
Question… the tutorial seems great, but I am worried when I do this merge, that it will overwrite posts on the import blog. Or does WP know how to “straighten” all that out without overwriting. I’d go MAD if it squished some of my good posts to put merged posts there. Or will it add it to the next available post #? I have no idea what a 301 redirect is, but I don’t care if the “rankings” follow me, I doubt that my old blog has much of them anyhow. It’s more to bring that content over rather than lose it. AND will it keep the right post date (so stuff is in order chronologically)?
HELP! (please)
Shannon
Shannon, I can only tell you what I know from my experience. I’ve combined WordPress blogs several times and have never lost any posts on either end. And yep, the posts keep the original post date.
I just had to leave a comment to say thank you very much for this post. I was going one post by one post re-uploading the images and it was a very slow going job, so with learning from this article I was able to merge 2 of my wordpress sites very quickly. Thank you very much and wish you all the best. Thank you again for sharing.
Also would be great to be online-friends with you related to online stuff, so send me an email and maybe sometimes we can help each other or just discuss online/website stuff.
Great post dude! I only had text and some images and after just export/import trick it all transferred in a breeze. Big thanks!
Super helpful, thanks! BTW – I didn’t have to bring all my pics over from the old site, as you suggested. They were all there after the import. I checked some of the images and they were in the correct location of the new site.
Nice post. Very clear and concise. Thanks! When I did my search on this topic – how to combine two WP blogs – I found your article at the very top of Google serps. Nice work.
This is indeed very good step-by-step tutorial and it works pretty well too.
surely when you upload your files via ftp you overwrite the directories so if your ‘new’ blog has the same structure you’ll lose those images?
In relation to the comments on 301 redirects, if you had to change the permalink structure (i did) for it to merge with your new blog, any active links you have out in the wild via search or referral are going to not work.
Thanks Tristan! i am jut doing the migration for two of my blogs having same niche . The only thing which made me frustrated was , both blogs are having different permalink structure . But after your post i have a clear steps to do in an order . Very informative post.
Worked like a charm — thanks! For some reason, I didn’t have to do the search/replace step, though — the photos showed up fine in the posts on their own.
The only real issue was that photos uploaded via FTP do not show up in the Media Library (they have to be uploaded through the Library to show). I had to add the new/old photos manually using the plugin Add From Server.
Thanks Tristan,
This was really helpful! Didn’t browse much through your blog, but I didn’t noticed any article about transferring traffic from old to new blog via webmaster tools. If you didn’t write something like this, I think it would be great if you do.
Once again, great job ;)
Hi, thanks for a nice manual.
Here are my advanced tips.
Similarly, like you are searching and replacing domain names in uploads folder, it’d be a wise idea to look for internal links, and replace domain names for those too. Of course, if you are using relative links like href=”/name-of-post”, then you’re good, but even then you might have some places you have href=”http://old-domain.com/name-of-post” instead.
The other tip, is making 301 redirects from the old blog to the new one. It can be done either via .htaccess file or by use of plugins.
Hope this was helpful. Will go trough the combining of two blogs soon, so just updating my memory about tasks to remember (as I’ve done this before).
Great post. I was about to manually import all of my “old” blogs as I thought this might be beyond my reach. It was not. Thanks for the info and the step-by-step. You just saved me hours and money! I owe you a coffee.
Hi,
This seems like a great post but when I look at my company blog admin that I want to import into my new Wordpress website I don’t see an export under Tools. Do you know why that is? I see it in the site I want to import that blog into but not on the existing blog.
Sorry Andrea, I’m not sure what the problem is. I’ve never experienced something like that before.
I’ve never tried this before. I was always scared that if you were to import posts from your old blog to your new blog, the old posts would overwrite the new posts. Why doesn’t this happen?
It doesn’t happen because each blog post has its own unique URL. There’s nothing to overwrite.
{ 11 trackbacks }