Moving WordPress blog posts to a new site sounds trivial until you try it. The built-in Tools > Export handles posts, categories and tags cleanly, but the moment you export anything less than "All content", it silently leaves the featured images behind. You land the posts on the new site and every one of them is missing its hero image. Here is the clean way to export WordPress blog posts with their featured images, categories and tags intact.
Why the default export drops featured images
A featured image is an attachment stored separately from the post; the post just references it by ID. WordPress only bundles attachments when you export "All content". Export just "Posts" and you get the text, categories and tags but none of the media, so the new site cannot resolve the image references.
Export posts with their media
- On the old site, install and activate Export media with selected content.
- Go to Tools > Export, choose Posts, and tick Export media with selected content.
- Click Download export file and save the XML.
Import on the new site
- On the new site, go to Tools > Import and choose WordPress, installing the importer if prompted.
- Upload the XML you just saved.
- Assign the post authors, and tick the option to download and import file attachments so the featured images come across.
Tips from doing this a lot
- Batch large blogs. If there are hundreds of posts, export in three to six month ranges to avoid import timeouts, then import the files one by one.
- Keep authors consistent. Map each imported author to the right user so bylines do not all collapse to admin.
- Mind in-content images. Featured images come across, but images embedded in the post body may still point at the old domain. Check a few posts and re-upload or update those URLs.
These days I move a lot of clients off WordPress onto static hosting entirely, but when the job is genuinely WordPress to WordPress, this is still the cleanest migration path in 2026.
Planning a site move and want the content to land without gaps? Talk it through with me.