Export All Media Files From WordPress.com

Export All Media Files From WordPress.com is not as easy a task as we would like it to be. Let’s say you built a very nice site on WordPress.com and you realized that you need to smarten up and move it to a self-hosted version of WordPress using WordPress.org.  Yes there is an “EXPORT” function that allows you to take all the content from WP.com to WP.org site but all the media files that you have uploaded are simply exported as a link to the file that stays on your WP.com site.  This means that if you ever shut down your WP.com site all the images and media files on your WP.org site will not be displayed.

The steps below will show you how to download all of your Media that belongs in your posts and pages.

STEP 1:

Log into your WordPress.com site and export all content into an XML file.  Click here for full instructions on how to export all content.

STEP 2:

Open your XML file with any text editor.  If you do not have one you can download one for free HERE.  One it is open inside of your text editor, do Save As media.html.  File name does not have to be Media but what ever name you choose, it must have the HTML extension.

STEP 3:

Download the Fire Fox browser add-on Down Them All.  If you do not have Fire Fox installed on your machine you can get it HERE.  Once you have installed Down Them All restart your browser and add it to the browser toolbar by clicking on the top left Firefox > Options > Toolbar Layout.

STEP 4:

Open the media.html file in your Firefox browser and click on the the Down Them All icon in your toolbar.  It will crawl all the links and put them in a window for you to download them.  See image below on the filters you should select to capture the media only.  Choose where to download the files and click on Start.

STEP 5:

Now that you have all the media file on your hard rive we have to get them into your WP.org site.  This is where it becomes a bit tricky to follow closely.  You must FTP into your WP.org site.  You can use Filezilla to get FTP access to your site.  Once you are in, navigate to the uploads folder.  Path should be something like /wp-content/uploads.  Inside the uploads folder create a new folder called Media or whatever you like.  Open this folder and drop in all the files you downloaded in step 4.

STEP 6:

Now we have to change the file paths for all this media on your WP.org site.  When you import your XML file to your WP.org site it creates paths to the images that look like this http://DOMAIN.files.wordpress.com/YEAR/MONTH/.   These paths are pointing back to your WP.com site and we don’t want that. We need to install a plugin that will search for these paths and replace them with our new path /wp-content/uploads/Media(or whatever you named folder)/

Install Plugin Search and Replace HERE.

1. Backup your database.  Use this PLUGIN to do so.
2. Goto Search and Replace plugin settings via Tools > Search & Replace
3. In Search for field enter http://DOMAIN.files.wordpress.com/YEAR/MONTH/
4. Click on field radio button in All -search/replace! selection
5. In Replace with field enter /wp-content/uploads/Media(or whatever you named folder)/
6. Click Go

Depending on how many years and months that you have on your WP.com site you will need to repeat the process above change the Year & Month each time.

That’s It!