Import from WordPress

You can bring an existing WordPress site into sc-cms: its pages, posts, categories and tags, and images. Nothing already on your sc-cms site is changed, so you can import into a new site or one you’ve already started.

1. Export from WordPress

In your WordPress admin, go to Tools → Export, choose All content, and click Download Export File. You get an .xml file.

Keep your WordPress site online until the import has finished, because sc-cms downloads the images from it.

2. Import it here

Go to Settings → Backups and export → Import from WordPress, choose the file, and click Import from WordPress. The import takes a few seconds for a typical site. Images keep arriving in the background for a few minutes after that.

What comes across

• Pages, with their parent pages, at the same addresses where possible (/about/team).
• Posts, under /blog/ (/blog/my-first-post), with their dates, excerpts, featured images, categories, and tags.
• Categories (including sub-categories) and tags. If one with the same address already exists here, it’s reused.
• Images and other files from your media library, and the images used in your posts. Alt text and captions come along.
• Search titles and descriptions from Yoast, Rank Math, or All in One SEO.
• Authors: content is credited to the person here with the same email address. Anyone without an account here is credited to you. No accounts are created.

Published pages and posts are published here too. Drafts, posts waiting for review, private posts, and scheduled posts arrive as drafts. Password-protected posts also arrive as drafts, because sc-cms has no post passwords and publishing them would make them public. Anything in the WordPress trash is left out.

Old links keep working

Your old WordPress addresses redirect to the new ones, so links from search engines, social media, and other sites still work. That includes date-based addresses like /2024/05/my-first-post/, short links like /?p=123, and category and tag pages. You’ll find all redirects under Content → Redirects.

Check the report

After the import, a report shows:

• what was imported, and how many items were published or kept as drafts (and why);
• addresses that were already taken here, and the new address each item got (for example hello-world-2);
• items with content that couldn’t be converted exactly. Tables become plain text; forms and most plugin shortcodes ([contact-form-7 …]) stay as text or are removed; maps and other embeds become links. Open these items in the editor and tidy them up;
• what wasn’t imported.

Images that couldn’t be downloaded are listed under Import from WordPress on the Settings page. Click one to open it, then use Replace file to upload it yourself.

What isn’t imported

• Comments
• Menus: rebuild them under Pages & Design → Navigation
• Widgets, theme settings, and plugin settings: they aren’t in WordPress exports
• Reusable blocks and site editor templates
• Custom post types (such as products or events): the report lists them with counts
• Your WordPress home page setting: choose your home page under Settings → Public site

If you run the same import twice, everything is added a second time with new addresses, so import only once.