WordPress Export to Markdown, CSV & HTML Converter

About the WordPress Export to Markdown, CSV & HTML Converter

Move off WordPress, or take stock of a blog, from the export file WordPress itself makes (the dashboard’s Tools menu, its export screen). Every post and page becomes a Markdown file with YAML front matter — title, date, slug, status, author, categories, tags, excerpt and featured image — converted by the same engine as the HTML to Markdown tool, with block-editor comments removed, WordPress’s own captions, galleries and embeds turned into Markdown, and other shortcodes kept or listed. Files are laid out for Hugo, Jekyll, Astro, Eleventy or Docusaurus, or as plain Markdown or HTML.

With them come an inventory of posts, pages, attachments, comments and custom post types (CSV or Excel), a list of every media address to download, and a redirect map from the old permalinks to the new addresses that the Redirect & .htaccess Generator reads as it is. The file is read on your device in a background worker, in pieces, so exports of hundreds of megabytes open; drafts and private posts go in only when you tick them.

Common uses

• Moving a blog from WordPress to Hugo, Jekyll, Astro, Eleventy or Docusaurus.
• Keeping an archive of a site in plain Markdown or HTML files.
• Auditing a site: every post, page, attachment and comment in one spreadsheet, with word counts and missing featured images.
• Planning redirects for a new address scheme, and finding the shortcodes and plugins the content depends on.

What goes into the ZIP

• Hugo: content/posts/ and content/ for pages (child pages in their parents’ folders), with title, date, lastmod, draft, slug, categories, tags, summary and images in the front matter.
• Jekyll: _posts/YYYY-MM-DD-slug.md, drafts in _drafts/, pages at the top, with layout, title, date, categories, tags and excerpt.
• Astro: src/content/blog/ with title, description, pubDate and updatedDate, the fields of Astro’s blog starter.
• Eleventy: posts/ and the pages at the top, with title, date, tags and an optional permalink.
• Docusaurus: blog/YYYY-MM-DD-slug.md with title, date, authors, tags, description, image and draft; pages in src/pages/.
• Plain Markdown or HTML: posts/ and pages/.

Custom post types get a folder of their own. The ZIP also holds _wordpress-export/ with the inventory, the comments (CSV and JSON), the media list, the redirect map and a report of the shortcodes and blocks found.

Classic and block-editor posts

WordPress stores classic-editor posts without paragraph tags and adds them when it shows a post, so the converter does the same, following WordPress’s wpautop(): double line breaks become paragraphs and single ones line breaks, never inside code blocks or around block elements. Block-editor posts already have their tags; their block comments are removed. Blocks that WordPress builds while it shows the page (latest posts, archives, search) have no content in the export: they are left out and listed in the report. Tables become Markdown tables where they are simple, and embedded videos and frames become links.

Shortcodes

WordPress’s own shortcodes are converted: [caption] to the picture with its caption, [gallery] to a list of its pictures (its ids, or the post’s attachments), [embed], [audio] and [video] to links, [playlist] to a list of links. Other shortcodes belong to plugins that only WordPress can run, so they are either kept as written — for generators that have shortcodes of their own, such as Hugo — or removed; either way the report lists each one and how often it appears. A word in square brackets such as “[sic]” is not taken for a shortcode.

Addresses and the redirect map

Each file gets its generator’s usual address — /posts/slug/ in Hugo, /YYYY/MM/DD/slug.html in Jekyll, /blog/slug/ in Astro — and the redirect map pairs every published post’s old permalink with it, as Old URL,New URL,Status rows that the Redirect & .htaccess Generator turns into rules for Apache, Nginx, Netlify and more. Tick Keep the old addresses to write them into the front matter instead (url in Hugo, permalink in Jekyll and Eleventy, slug in Docusaurus), so those pages need no redirect; Hugo can also list them as aliases. Some addresses cannot be kept, and the redirect map lists them: Docusaurus puts a blog post’s slug under its blog address (/blog unless you change it), Astro and plain Markdown or HTML files take their addresses from their file names, and WordPress’s plain permalinks (/?p=123) are no path a static site has.

Pictures and other media

The export holds the addresses of the attachments, not the files. media-urls.txt lists every attachment and every picture used in the posts, one address per line, ready for a download manager; this page never contacts your site. With Point pictures to /uploads/, the posts link to /uploads/2024/03/photo.jpg instead of the WordPress address, matching the folders the media list gives.

The inventory

One row per post, page, attachment and custom post: ID, type, status, title, slug, date, author, categories, tags, parent, comments, words, featured image, old address, file in the ZIP and new address — as CSV or as an Excel workbook with sheets for the items, the comments, the media and the redirects. Comments are listed without their e-mail and IP addresses unless you tick Include commenters’ e-mail and IP addresses. The element names are read as the official WordPress Importer reads them.

Limitations

• Pictures are not downloaded: the page never contacts your site. Download them with the media list.
• Plugin shortcodes cannot be run outside WordPress; they are kept as text or removed, and listed.
• Content a plugin keeps outside the post itself (page-builder layouts, custom fields) is not converted; the post’s own HTML is.
• Menus, widgets, theme settings and users are not posts, so they are not converted. Export files up to about 600 MB; a large export takes a few minutes on a phone.

Privacy

On this device: nothing is sent

Everything happens in your browser. What you enter or open here is not uploaded or stored by MySmartCoPilot.