WordPress post insertion from PHP file

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The PHP way

If you want to use PHP, you can use wp_insert_post to insert posts programatically. Basically you want to provide an array of post information (title, content, date…). You can read more about it here: https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/functions/wp_insert_post/

But the problem is you should not run that function to import all 100 posts. I used to solve the same problem: Migrate 34k posts from old site to new site using WordPress. Here is what I did:

  • Write a PHP script to crawl the post URLs of target site. I wrap it in a Page template. I use Simple HTML DOM to extract data from page. I append the result to the page itself.
  • Still on that page, after getting all URLs I need, I use Ajax to insert post one by one. Use Simple HTML DOM to extract data, then use wp_insert_post to insert post to database with the crawled data
    • Get URL from the list append in the previous step
    • Use Simple HTML DOM to extract data from that URL
    • Use wp_insert_post to create post with extracted data.
    • Repeat that action until all done.

The CSV way

IMO, build a WordPress xml file to import is hard. You can think about a simpler alternative choice is CSV. Build a CSV file is more straight forward and simpler. Then you can use a CSV import plugin to create posts on your new site.