Problem: I have a big excel spreadsheet with posts and extra fields and I want to import it into Wordpress.
I haven’t found a plugin to do this so I decided to make my own. It’s not complete, and it’s not quite a ‘plugin’ but it works. Here’s how to do it:
- Download CSV_Import class from me. csv2 post.
- Unzip and up load the file called csv.php to /wp-admin/import/
- Prepare your csv file, here is a sample file. It’s really a pipe delimited file. It MUST follow this format or it will not work. Make sure you include the header row.
- In admin panel , go to Manage, Import, choose CSV
- The rest is pretty self explanitory, upload file, pick a user, and voilá
NICE. I’ve been searching for something like this for-ev-er. I’m about to use it to create 288,000 pages. I will probably break it down into bite size chunks so everything doesn’t choke and die.
Any idea how many this can handle. Oh, and can I create unlimited (16 or so) fields with this? And can it create pages also or just posts? Sweet ass work, get a donation button doood.
I am having troubles… can you look at this text file and help me figure out what I’m doing wrong?
wp_title|wp_post_date|wp_category|wp_content|zip|website|phone|attorney|position|sex|employees|revenue
A Conflict Management Ctr|12/31/07 23:59|anchorage|310 K St # 200|99501-2064|Not Available|9072646687|Not Available|Not Available|Not Available|6|1002000
A Fred Miller Attorneys At Law|12/31/07 23:59|ketchikan|426 Main St|99901-6316|Not Available|9072256666|A Fred Miller|Owner|Male|5|835000
A Robert Hahn Jr|12/31/07 23:59|anchorage|1500 W 33rd Ave|99503-3639|Not Available|9072791544|A Robert Hahn Jr|Not Available|Male|2|334000
Hey 7th loyal reader!
First things first, I’m glad you liked the code…even if it hasn’t worked for you yet.
I haven’t tested the code on WP 2.5 yet. The problem with your file though I think is the date format. You must follow
YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS:MS
(dashes not slashes)…hope that was it.. let me know.
thanks for this awesome plugin.
i am working on a new project and need to import about 2000 posts.
every post includes an excerpt and data for the plugin “All in One SEO Pack”.
can i import these fields as well?
i assume i have to look in the mysql table for the corresponding table name and just add it to the csv file.
Hey Michael,
Sorry man…excerpts are not officially supported yet. I’ll work on it. Check back. Another thing, the plugin uses all WP functions…doesn’t talk directly to MySQL.
Hey Zack,
I usually build my websites tree on spreadsheet so I will have the different levels of the website [categories(first level)--> subcategories(second level) --> sub-subcategories(third level)] deployed there.
I would like to import this into WP.
Is there a way to achieve this with your plugin?
Hey Nick,
I’m currently adding support for cats/subcats. Check back.
thanks for the update Zack,
you saved me hours of mindnumbing work.
Hey Zack,
Thanks for your reply. I already checked the update you posted but still can´t make it to do what I need…can I create with the updated version you posted sub-categories already?
If yes, could you provide a short example of the required syntax to define properly the child categories? Already tred but got no luck.
It would be great REALLY to have as many child categories created as desired.
Also, like mentioned above by Michael, the possibility to have titles, tags, etc passed to the All-in-One-SEO-Plugin would be Heaven.
All heavy WP users use it extensively so if you achieve this, your plugin is gonna rock for sure.
Thanks again for your time and keep it up! Looking forward for the updates.
Any news Zack?
Hey Nick, see the new post
Hey Zack,
Nice job…worked like charm. I am not sure if I missed it but are we able with the new version to pass parameters to the All-in-One SEO plugin?
Not sure if this can be achieved via the additional field tags…
Cheers
Actually, would be great if you could provide a quick overview of how we’re supposed to use the extra fields & excerpts columns…
Hey Nick,
you can pass parameters to the All-in-One SEO plugin with csv_import.
just add “all-in-ONE SEO” custom fields to the txt file. put the “key” in the first row, and the values below.
thanks! a lot.. this worked like a charm!
Hi Zack, thanks for the plugin. I’v not managed to get it to work yet though. After selecting my file and then clicking import I’m getting this message:
Import CSV
Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /content/DesignerPlus/l/o/mydomain.co.uk/web/wp-admin/admin-header.php:16) in /content/DesignerPlus/l/o/mydomain.co.uk/web/wp-includes/functions.php on line 2448
Any ideas? As usual it’s probably something dead simple but I’ve just not worked it out yet. I think this site is on wordpress 2.0.4.
Thanks
Just tried it out for 5 minutes but it looks really good so far !
How we can modify the plugin to import pages?
Thanks!
I’m not sure how much work would be involved in changing the code to import pages instead of posts. The line/function used to import the post is
$post_id = wp_insert_post($postdata);
I started looking into what function is used to create a page and I can’t seem to find it (granted, I only looked for about 5 minutes). If anybody has the patience to find it, let me know, maybe I can add an ‘import page’ feature.
Hi there -
I still can’t get this to work for me… I’ve tried on a few version of WP. In some of my field values I am using spaces – does that matter? Does white space matter at all?
thanks!
I’m having such a hard time with this. Can I send you my text file to take a look at? I have tried so so many different things and it is just not working.
I have changed my date format as suggested, and in fact I have changed tons of things. I am saving a CSV from excel, opening in a Mac text editor, replacing my commas with pipes, and then saving as a .txt. Any help is much appreciated.
<B
I got it now — If any Mac users are out there going from an excel CSV to a text file, export from excel as a CSV(Windows) file in the sace as options. Duh, I feel like saying to myself, hopefully this will save someone else some time. Plug in rocks!! Thanks for your work Zack.
Hey Michael & Zack,
I´ve tried to insert the proper “keys” in the txt file to pass values to the All in One SEO plugin…I want to pass value for theses variables in the plugin: title, meta description & metakeywords.
Can you help me achieve this? Just a small example to clarify which are the correct “keys”?
Thanks in advanced guys!
Any help here guys?
There are no difference between post and pages just the “post_type” field which has to be “page”
Hello: I’ve been looking for something like this! Thank you! I try to import and get the message “The uploaded file could not be moved to …httpdocs/wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/05. 121″. What am I doing wrong?
Hi Loren,
wp-content needs to be writable by the server. Make sure permissions are right. Maybe that’s it.
Zack
Hi!
I am interested in contributing to the development of your tool. What I’d like to have:
* possibility to import pages instead of posts
* control more columns than just the four you have.
* define default values for other columns
* column “id” to modify existing posts.
* export csv (with ids) for easy mass manipulation in excel. This export could happen automatically with every import.
Do you have a repository somewhere, where I could contribute?
Please contact me if you are interested in cooperation!
Hi LemonHead
Thanks for offering! Your ideas are great. I don’t know what repository to host the project. I don’t know if this script really qualifies as a plugin to submit to Wordpress.org because it runs under the admin/import section and not /plugin. I could be wrong…it may not make a difference to Wordpress under what dir the script runs. Anyway, I say this because they (wordpress.org) use SVN to keep versions of plugins and maybe we could collaborate through that. If you have any ideas on which repository to use please let me know. This could really turn into a great project.
Great it works like a charm
Thanks a lot
And another one
* allow more flexible input format
I prefer to not publish my email in public, but I hope you can find it on the admin backend.
About the repository. So far I have not bothered to get my own repository running somewhere. WP.org seems like an easy solution, so why not have a try.
Btw, I don’t find an rss link for the comments. I would like to keep up to date!
Thx, lem.
Hello,
Thanks for your great plugin first. Is it possible to have tag(s) support?
Now gave it some MVC, made the variables more local (I don’t like methods to communicate via class-scope variables), and made some things more logical (or what I perceive as more logical).
It’s going quite well, but now I am arriving at the tasty part, the process_post method, which at some point calls the WP function wp_insert_post(..). I am sure I can bite my way through, but I would be happy about some assistance and someone telling me what’s the idea behind all the lines of this function. Sometimes I think I can magically simplify things, but miss some of the original ideas which have been behind.
Another function which I don’t fully get is the get_tag() method. Is the user expected to put some XML tags into the input table?
Would be great if you can lighten me up a bit
Nice plugins. But, how about if I want to put tags in there ? how to make it.
For example :
wp_title|wp_post_date|wp_category|wp_content|tags|field2|field3
I want to make it like this :
wp_title|wp_content|wp_category|wp_post_date|tags1, tags2, tags3, moretags
Any way to insert custom slug/post_name?
I’d like to order posts by post_name (different than the sanitized post_title).
In my site’s scheme, post_title is the book’s title, post_name/slug is the book’s reference number.
Hi, looks like a great plugin.
I’d like to use it to import datafeed items with images. How would I add an image field into csv and connect it to the post (wp-content)?
thanks.
Hi,
I looked at discussion about All-in-one SEO plugin… How exactly txt line will look? Anybody can give an example?
…|wp-content|All-in-one SEO|tags
…|fun staff|Title: Post1, Description: test desc|test tag
????
Anybody can help please?
Hey guys,
I am having issues while importing posts…for instance, whenever I have a new line or starting a tense on a different line the plugin assumes it’s a new post….any ideas on how to solve this?
Thanks a lot!
Nick
I tried to import post using rss/xml format but i had problem with the custom field. then someone suggested me to try this and voila! its working perfectly!
a million thanks to you zack.
awesome work here. I do have a question though.
Do you know how to merge three cell columns together? ie: A, B and C
I have a csv file thats got 3 columns for different information but I need it all to go into one so I can add it into the wp_content column.
Any help is appreciated.
Thanks
I think this is perfect for what I need… only problem is it’s not importing the content. Instead, it’s putting, for example from your sample, “My Post Title” and “Another Post” into the title and content fields.
I’m using Wordpress 2.6. Thanks a ton! If I can get this to work, you’ll have saved me hours of work!
Ok, disregard my last comment. I must have had a something wrong. It’s working perfectly now! Thanks!
Do the spaces between the text and the pipe have to be spaces, or are tab’s ok?
Thanks again!
All that is needed to make a “post” a “page” is one variable
online 292 of your script change:
$post_type = “post”;
to
$post_type = “page”;
im no php whiz
but this seemed to work! i tried it with your test csv after only changing that one line and the sample shows up in my pages area of wordpress 
by the way .. you ROCK thank you for posting this plugin i have been wanting something for this forever!
Is there a limit to the characters in wp_content
mine contains the following:
REBECCA is between 20 and 30 and is in a relationship (but not yet engaged or married). Rebecca LOVES the brand-name DiamondGeezer.com. and described the Diamond Geezer web site as EXCELLENT.She added ……TextPad loads an entire file into memory when you edit it, so the original file is not changed until you save the changes. You can opt to keep the original file as a backup when saving changes, and to keep it locked while you edit it.
But ends after She added ……
Hi
This looks really great… just one, probably dumb question… how do I get a csv file to be pipe delimited?
aarg dont worry… typically after spending 2 hours online etc to figure it out, I got it together after writing this note… apologies!
Hi,
need your help here:
uploaded the csv.php file to my plugins folder, but it doesn’t show up in the plugins dashboard?
I’m using wordpress 2.6.2 – is it working with that?
how can I fix this?
thanks a lot for your help,
bob
Hi Bob,
This is not a traditional plugin. It goes in the wp-admin/import folder. You will see the link under Manage|Import
Zack
Ah, great, now I got it. Thanks a lot, this is just what I was looking for.
Am still trying to figure out the details with how to do long posts with several paragraphs, currently it breaks them up into separate posts for some reason.
Thanks again!
Is there another way to upload the file to be imported (such as FTP)? The problem is, when I use the web form, it times out after 1000 posts and I have like 10,000 posts to import (long story…)