I am in the process of giving my blog a new dress. She has grown a bit and deserves some new clothes (a.k.a. A redesign). In the process of doing this I am analyzing every aspect of my blog. After taking a step back, I realized that I need to clean up my categories. I want to merge a few categories, ditch a few categories and add a few categories.
The first thing that I wanted to do is take a look at all of my blog post by category. Considering that I have written just over 100 blog posts, it is a bit difficult to do that in WordPress. Immediately I realized that the best solution was to export the blog post titles with their categories to excel. Copying and pasting into excel one at a time was going to be a pain but fortunately for us all, there is always a WordPress plugin for just about anything.
WordPress Plugin
If your goal is to extract all the main post fields (including custom fields) into text with each row representing 1 post, then check this out.
▪ Export your data in an Excel-friendly format
▪ Easily move your posts in text between WordPress installs when used in-conjunction with CSV Importer ( http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/csv-importer/ )
▪ Make quick backups of your posts and save them in a text file
▪ Download your data as a TXT file
Step 1: Install the plugin
Step 2: Open Plugin Options
Step 3: Choose Plugin Options
There are quite a few options to choose from here so it is important to consider what you want. One of the features that is so handy about this plugin is the fact that you can export by Category.
Step 4: Open Downloaded File
Generally when I open a file on my computer, I just double click on it. However, with this file you need to open it using excel so that you don’t get a jumbled text file.
Step 5: Just Say OK
Step 6: Clean Up Your Spreadsheet and Go to Work
In the end I cleaned up my spreadsheet to only include Title, Date, Category and Tags. Now I can start organizing my categories better and have a good grasp on where I am headed for my redesign efforts.
If you can dream it, you can do it. ~Walt Disney
Renee, great post. Just discovered your blog, and I’ve loved every post I’ve read! Jeff Stephens at crazydadlife.com just did a great podcast on his site redesign. He overhauled his entire site in a weekend. It’s his second weekend-centric project that he’s blogged about. Fascinating stuff, with a lot to learn.
I’m also working on site overhauls for all my sites and I understand the trials and tribulations. Thanks for the info on how your process has begun!
Make it a great day!
Jeff Page (aka Hectic-Dad)
http://hectic-dad.com
Hey that is great advice. I was considering a redo too, but I was nervous about making changes that it might confuse my followers?