Export WordPress pages, posts, and custom posts to portable local packages with builder data, media, and human-readable markdown. Import to another site with smart ID remapping. Auto-backup before AI edits. Use when user says "export my site", "backup my pages", "migrate content", "download my content", or "content portability".

Content Portability

Export WordPress content to portable local packages. Import to another site with smart ID remapping. Auto-backup before AI edits. Full builder data preservation, human-readable markdown previews, and optional media download.

What This Skill Does

Exports:

Pages, posts, and custom post types — individually or in bulk
Full builder data (Elementor, Bricks, Divi, etc.) alongside standard content
Allowlisted post meta (SEO fields, featured images, builder config)
Human-readable markdown preview of every page/post
Optional media binary download for fully offline packages
Manifest with hashes, stats, and export metadata

Imports:

Reads a local Respira Content Package and pushes to a target WordPress site
Smart ID remapping — media IDs, post IDs, and internal links rewritten for the target site
Bulk conflict resolution — detects slug collisions upfront, one decision for all
Mandatory server-side snapshots before any overwrites (safety net)
Builder JSON rewriting with full ID mapping tables
Fidelity verification — re-reads imported content and compares hashes

Auto-Backup:

Quick-backup mode before any AI edit — saves a local snapshot to ./respira-backups/
Timestamped, human-readable, zero-friction insurance

Requirements

Respira for WordPress plugin installed and activated
MCP connection configured (site URL + API key)
For import: write access on the target site
For media download: sufficient local disk space

How to Use

Trigger Phrases

"export my site"
"export the homepage"
"backup my pages before editing"
"download my content locally"
"migrate content to my other site"
"content portability"
"create a local backup"
"export with media"

Export Workflow

Phase 1: Scope Selection

Ask the user what to export:
- Single page/post: "export the homepage", "backup the about page"
- Full site: "export everything", "download all my content"
- By type: "export all blog posts", "export portfolio items"
Ask whether to include media downloads:
- Without media (default): Fast, small packages with URL references
- With media: Downloads all referenced images/files locally for full offline portability

Phase 2: Content Enumeration 3. Call wordpress_list_pages, wordpress_list_posts, and/or wordpress_list_custom_posts to enumerate content in scope 4. For each item, call wordpress_read_page or wordpress_read_post with include=builder.extracted,meta.allowlisted to get full content with builder data 5. Report progress every 10 items: "Exported 30/120 pages..."

Phase 3: Write Local Package 6. Create the export directory structure:

respira-export/
├── manifest.json              # Package metadata, source site, export date, hashes
├── README.md                  # One-line import prompt for zero-friction migration
├── pages/
│   ├── home/
│   │   ├── content.json       # Full machine-readable export
│   │   └── content.md         # Human-readable markdown preview
│   ├── about/
│   │   ├── content.json
│   │   └── content.md
│   └── ...
├── posts/
│   ├── 2024-hello-world/
│   │   ├── content.json
│   │   └── content.md
│   └── ...
├── cpt/                       # Custom post types
│   └── {post_type}/
│       └── {slug}/
│           ├── content.json
│           └── content.md
└── media/                     # Only if --with-media
    ├── media-index.json       # URL→local-path mapping with old media IDs
    └── uploads/
        ├── hero-image.webp
        └── ...

For each page/post, write two files:

content.json — machine-readable, contains:

{
  "export_version": "1.0",
  "source_site": "https://example.com",
  "exported_at": "2026-03-16T14:30:00Z",
  "post": {
    "id": 42,
    "post_type": "page",
    "title": "About Us",
    "slug": "about",
    "status": "publish",
    "content": "<full HTML content>",
    "excerpt": "...",
    "modified": "2026-03-10T09:00:00Z"
  },
  "builder": {
    "name": "bricks",
    "payload": {},
    "extracted": {}
  },
  "meta": {
    "_thumbnail_id": 108,
    "_yoast_wpseo_title": "About Us | Example"
  },
  "hashes": {
    "content_hash": "sha256:abc123...",
    "builder_hash": "sha256:def456...",
    "meta_hash": "sha256:ghi789..."
  }
}

content.md — human-readable markdown preview:

# About Us

**Source:** https://example.com/about/
**Type:** page | **Status:** publish | **Builder:** Bricks
**Exported:** 2026-03-16

---

[Rendered text content extracted from HTML, preserving headings and structure]

## Section: Hero
- Heading: "Welcome to Our Company"
- Text: "We've been helping businesses..."
- Image: hero-team-photo.webp (Media ID: 108)

## Section: Team
- Heading: "Meet the Team"
...

If media download is enabled:
- Call wordpress_list_media to get all media items
- Filter to only media referenced by exported content
- Download each file and save to media/uploads/
- Write media/media-index.json mapping old URLs and IDs to local paths

Phase 4: Manifest & Stats 9. Write manifest.json:

{
  "export_version": "1.0",
  "source_site": "https://example.com",
  "source_wordpress_version": "6.7.1",
  "source_respira_version": "4.3.1",
  "exported_at": "2026-03-16T14:30:00Z",
  "scope": "full_site",
  "content": {
    "pages": 23,
    "posts": 8,
    "custom_post_types": { "portfolio": 12, "testimonial": 5 }
  },
  "media": {
    "included": true,
    "files": 156,
    "total_bytes": 52428800
  },
  "warnings": [],
  "skipped": [],
  "hashes": {
    "manifest_hash": "sha256:..."
  }
}

Write README.md:

# Respira Content Package

Exported from: https://example.com
Date: 2026-03-16
Contents: 23 pages, 8 posts, 17 custom posts, 156 media files

## To import this content to another site

Tell your AI agent:
> Import the content package from ./respira-export/

## Package format
- content.json files contain full machine-readable content with builder data
- content.md files are human-readable previews
- media/ contains downloaded media files (if included)

Show export stats summary:

Export Complete
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Pages exported:     23
Posts exported:      8
Custom posts:       17
Media files:       156
Package size:     52.4 MB
Warnings:           0
Skipped:            0
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Saved to: ./respira-export/

Import Workflow

Phase 1: Read & Validate Package

Read manifest.json from the local package
Validate export version compatibility
Report what will be imported: "Found 23 pages, 8 posts, 156 media files from example.com"

Phase 2: Upload Media (if included) 4. If media/ directory exists with files:

For each media file, call wordpress_upload_media on the target site
Build the media ID mapping table: { old_id: 108, new_id: 342 }
Log each upload; skip failures with warning

If media was not included in the package:
- Media references will point to original URLs (cross-site references)
- Warn the user about this

Phase 3: Detect Conflicts 6. For each content item in the package, check if a page/post with the same slug already exists on the target site 7. Present all conflicts upfront in a single table:

Slug Conflicts Detected (5 of 23 pages)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Slug          Source Title       Target Title
about         About Us           About Our Company
contact       Contact            Contact Us
team          Our Team           The Team
services      Services           Our Services
faq           FAQ                FAQ

Ask the user for a bulk resolution strategy:
- Overwrite all: Replace target content with package content
- Skip conflicts: Only import non-conflicting content
- Rename imports: Add suffix to conflicting slugs (e.g., about-imported)

Phase 4: Snapshot Existing Content 9. MANDATORY: Before overwriting any existing content, take a server-side snapshot of each target page/post using the existing snapshot system

This uses the before_edit snapshot kind automatically via MCP write operations
Ensures rollback is always possible

Phase 5: Create/Update Content 10. For each content item: - If no conflict or overwrite strategy: call wordpress_update_page or wordpress_update_post - Set title, content, excerpt, status, and allowlisted meta - Build the post ID mapping table: { old_id: 42, new_id: 187 } 11. Report progress every 10 items

Phase 6: Rewrite & Inject Builder Data 12. For each imported page/post that has builder data: - Take the builder JSON from content.json - Rewrite all media IDs using the media ID mapping table - Rewrite all internal post/page IDs using the post ID mapping table - Rewrite all internal URLs from source domain to target domain - Call wordpress_inject_builder_content to apply the rewritten builder data

Phase 7: Verify & Report 13. For each imported page/post: - Re-read via wordpress_read_page/wordpress_read_post - Compare content hashes to source hashes - Flag any mismatches 14. Show import report:

Import Complete
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Pages imported:     23  (5 overwrites, 18 new)
Posts imported:      8  (0 overwrites, 8 new)
Media uploaded:    156  (2 skipped — too large)
Builder data:       19  pages with builder content rewritten
ID remappings:     187  references updated
Hash verification: 46/48 match (2 minor diffs flagged)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Server-side snapshots taken for all overwrites.

Auto-Backup Workflow

A lightweight mode for quick local backups before AI editing:

User says "backup the homepage before editing" or "save a local copy first"
Call wordpress_read_page with full includes
Write a single timestamped file: ./respira-backups/home-2026-03-16-1430.json
Also write the markdown preview: ./respira-backups/home-2026-03-16-1430.md
Confirm: "Backed up homepage to ./respira-backups/home-2026-03-16-1430.json"
Proceed with the requested edit

Diff Workflow

Compare local export against current site state:

User says "what changed since my last export?" or "diff my backup"
Read the local manifest.json to identify exported content
For each exported page/post, call wordpress_read_page/wordpress_read_post
Compare content hashes from local content.json against current site hashes
Report differences:

Content Changes Since Export (2026-03-16)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Changed:
  about         Content updated (builder + text)
  homepage      Builder layout changed
  pricing       Text content changed

Unchanged:    21 pages, 8 posts
New on site:   2 pages (not in export)
Deleted:       0 pages

Error Handling

The skill must handle these scenarios gracefully:

Error	Action	User Sees
Site disconnected	Stop, report what was saved	"Site unreachable — 45/120 pages saved"
Page not found mid-export	Skip, log in manifest warnings	"Skipped: About (deleted)"
Malformed builder data	Export raw content without builder	Warning in manifest
Disk full	Stop, report progress	"Disk full after 45 pages"
Media download 404/403	Skip file, log in media-index	"Skipped 3 media files"
Slug conflict on import	Bulk resolution (see Phase 3)	Conflict table
Media upload too large	Skip, log	"Skipped: hero.webp (too large)"
Builder version mismatch	Warn, import anyway	Warning in report

Key rule: Always continue on non-fatal errors (skip the item, log it). Never silently drop content. Always produce a summary of warnings/skips at the end.

Safety Model

Read-only export: No changes to the source site during export
Mandatory snapshots: Server-side snapshot taken before every import overwrite
Non-destructive import: Creates new content or overwrites with snapshot safety net
Rollback ready: Server-side snapshots enable one-click restoration via wordpress_restore_snapshot
No credential exposure: Only allowlisted meta is exported — no API keys, passwords, or sensitive plugin settings

Honest Disclaimer

What this skill CANNOT do:

Export/import WordPress settings, options, or configuration
Export/import user accounts or roles
Export/import plugin or theme files
Handle taxonomy/term migration (categories, tags) — future enhancement
Guarantee pixel-perfect builder rendering across different builder versions
Process sites with more than ~500 pages in a single session (token/context limits)

What this skill CAN do:

Create complete local backups of pages, posts, and custom post types
Preserve full builder data (Elementor, Bricks, Divi) across migrations
Download media for fully offline packages
Generate human-readable markdown previews of all content
Migrate content between sites with smart ID remapping
Auto-backup before AI edits for peace of mind
Compare local backups against current site state

Respira MCP Tools Used

wordpress_list_pages / wordpress_list_posts / wordpress_list_custom_posts — enumerate content
wordpress_read_page / wordpress_read_post / wordpress_get_custom_post — read full content with builder data
wordpress_list_media / wordpress_get_media — media enumeration and metadata
wordpress_upload_media — upload media during import
wordpress_update_page / wordpress_update_post / wordpress_update_custom_post — create/update content during import
wordpress_inject_builder_content — apply rewritten builder data during import
wordpress_get_active_site / wordpress_get_site_context — verify connection and site details
wordpress_list_snapshots / wordpress_restore_snapshot — safety net for imports

Related Skills

Site Onboarding — first-run primer, discovers site capabilities
WordPress Site DNA — deep site archaeology and health scoring
Technical Debt Audit — find orphaned content and unused plugins before migration
WordPress AI Image Optimizer — optimize images before or after migration

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