Tip: Syndication
Here are some steps to follow if you want to pull all your posts from Building Stories to put them on your new WordPress (Sorry if the numbering of the steps is a little confusing. I have it formatted properly in my post with letters and roman numerals, but some of the theme files are overriding my formatting).
- Download and install the plugin FeedWordPress
- You can download FeedWordPress here.
- Next go to your WordPress’s dashboard.
- Install the plugin by going to Plugins->Add New then click Upload Plugin at the top of the page.
- Click “Choose File” and navigate to where you downloaded the plugin. (On Mac by default it should be in your “Downloads” folder. Also it should be a “zip” file.)
- Double click on the file and click “Install Now”.
- After you install you will need to activate the plugin.
- Now you should see the new option “Syndication” towards the bottom of the dashboard menu. Here is where we can edit all the settings related to syndicating content from another WordPress.
- To pull all your posts from Building Stories start by clicking on “Syndication”.
- Then next to “New source:” type in http://buildingstories.suzannechurchill.com/f15/category/name/
- Replace name with your name since this is the name of the category where you post all your work. (Make sure that name is all lower case)
- ***Note that you can replace name with whatever category you want to syndicate in order to pull posts from another site***
- Next click “Add”
- This will bring you to a page with all the possible feeds you could syndicate from. Scroll down until you find the one where the Homepage field is “Building Stories F15 >> name”.
- Click “Use this feed”.
- Replace name with your name since this is the name of the category where you post all your work. (Make sure that name is all lower case)
- To pull all your posts from Building Stories start by clicking on “Syndication”.
- If you have less than 10 posts to retrieve you can skip to step 4.
- Default WordPress settings only allow the last 10 posts to be retrieved, so the first thing you need to do is check with the site owner to see if they could up the limit. (I have changed Building Stories to allow the 25 most recent. I don’t think anyone has more than 20 posts so this should be a good limit.) Just in case you need a site owner to up the limit and they do not know how to:
- As an admin from the WordPress dashboard you can do this by going to Settings->Reading.
- Then you can change the number next to “Syndication feeds show the most recent”.
- Next you have to edit the number that the feed on your site is pulling back.
- From the WordPress dashboard navigate to Syndication->Feeds & Updates.
- In the dropdown box that reads “-defaults for all feeds-” select the option “Building Stories F15 >> name”.
- Under your “Feed URL” click “Add a Query Parameter”.
- For the name type “num” and for the put a number larger than the number of posts you are pulling back. (I used 20)
- Save your changes.
- From the WordPress dashboard navigate to Syndication->Feeds & Updates.
- Default WordPress settings only allow the last 10 posts to be retrieved, so the first thing you need to do is check with the site owner to see if they could up the limit. (I have changed Building Stories to allow the 25 most recent. I don’t think anyone has more than 20 posts so this should be a good limit.) Just in case you need a site owner to up the limit and they do not know how to:
- To make sure that your posts are inserted into your site correctly navigate to Syndication->Categories & Tags
- Under the Section “Feed Categories & Tag”:
- Look for “Match feed categories” and uncheck all 3 boxes.
- Look for “Unmatched categories”. The default is to “Create New Categories to match them”, but I recommend changing this option to “Don’t create any matching terms” so your posts do not have all the categories from Building Stories.
- Look for “Match inline tags” and make sure all 3 options are unchecked.
- Look for “Match feed categories” and uncheck all 3 boxes.
- Under the Section “Categories” you can select which category you want all your new posts to have.
- Save your changes.
- Under the Section “Feed Categories & Tag”:
- To avoid creating any new users on your WordPress site navigate to Syndication->Authors from the menu on the left.
- Next to “Unmatched authors” select “will have their posts attributed to admin” (admin will be the name of what your WordPress user account is named). This will ensure that you are marked as the author for all the posts.
- Next to “Unmatched authors” select “will have their posts attributed to admin” (admin will be the name of what your WordPress user account is named). This will ensure that you are marked as the author for all the posts.
- Next navigate to Syndication->Posts & Links. Find the option “Permalinks point:” and select “The local copy on this website”.
- Still on Syndication->Posts & Links look for “Image filters” and uncheck “Set featured image”. Save your changes.
- Now it is time to syndicate. From the dashboard menu click “Syndication”. Down in “Syndicated sources” click on “Update Now”.
- Now all your posts from Building Stories should appear in your posts.
***Note that this plugin will not pull back your featured images so you will have to manually set them***
Let me know if you run into any issues, and I will be glad to help!
Sabrina
This was super helpful Sabrina!! Thank you so much. If anyone is wondering how to get rid of the excess posts, like their drafts, et cetera, go to Posts, where they are all listed, and scroll over the ones you don’t want to be displayed. There should be a number of options, and you want to click Zap/Don’t Resyndicate (should be in red). This will stop the post from being resyndicated continually and will remove it from your posts. Be sure that you’re zapping the right posts though, or immediately undo the action, or else you may lose the posts in your syndication feed.