Exporting and Backing Up WordPress Posts with wp export Command

Introducing how to export and backup WordPress database blog posts and content from the command line via SSH connection using the wp export command.

wp export | WP-CLI Command | WordPress Developer Resources

Navigate to the WordPress installation directory from the command line via SSH, and simply run the wp export command to easily export and backup.

$ wp export
Starting export process...
Writing to file /home/yuis/yuis-programming.com/public_html/_hoge/yourblog.wordpress.2021-11-03.000.xml
Success: All done with export.

An .xml file was output.

Let’s take a look at the file.

$ file yourblog.wordpress.2021-11-03.000.xml
yourblog.wordpress.2021-11-03.000.xml: XML 1.0 document, UTF-8 Unicode text, with very long lines

The file size was approximately 5MB.

$ du -h yourblog.wordpress.2021-11-03.000.xml
4.6M    yourblog.wordpress.2021-11-03.000.xml

As a side note, since the output data should be placed in the public directory, there is a risk that hackers or third parties could download the file if the file path becomes known.

Exported files may contain sensitive data (such as unpublished posts), so it’s a good idea to move the exported file to a location that is not a public directory.

$ mv yourblog.wordpress.2021-11-03.000.xml ~/data/