Wordpress 2.9 export does not work correctly

Submitted by LittleTechGirl on Thursday, 4 February 2010 Comments

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I have been doing some maintenance on my webhost and cleaning up old sites, databases, files, etc. Earlier today I goofed and nuked the database for this site. But, before I started I used the Wordpress export tool in wp-admin to export all my posts, etc. (or so I thought). I had just done a complete database backup via sql 2 days ago so I felt well covered. So, I was not too worried when I had to restore the database from 2 days ago and then import the xml file to restore posts since then. Well, I soon found out that there is a major issue with the Wordpress export function and it only had very, very old posts in it. I had a similar experience with my test site. I am quite mad. I luckily had only written 3-4 posts since then, but 2 of those were paid posts and now I have to rewrite them. Boo…

Just for sh*ts and giggles I wondered if Google might have had those posts cached already. They had every single page and post on my site cached except the ones that I need.

So, I’m off to write those posts again.

BEWARE: Do NOT trust the Wordpress export tool. I have seen some other complaints about the same on Wordpress.org but have not found a solution yet.

Jaypee Habaradas

I recommend you install the WP DBManager plugin to create regular backups of your WordPress database. You can also use the same plugin to do a restore from a backup file that you created earlier.

Regarding the lost posts, do you publish full feeds on RSS? If you do, make sure you subscribe to your own RSS feed via email. You can retrieve your lost posts from the RSS feed sent to your email address. The only thing you lose are comments or trackbacks.

Hope that helps. :)