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Free Plugin by Jason Judge v0.6.1

CSV Importer Improved

Import posts from CSV files into WordPress.

CSV Importer Improved

The facts

Rating
3.2★ from 5
Active installs
100+
Price
Free
Last updated
10 Oct 2016
Added
Dec 2015
Requires WP
3.0.0
Tested up to
WP 4.6.30
Downloads
11,823

Our analysis

AI-assisted

CSV Importer Improved is a WordPress plugin that allows you to import posts from CSV files into your WordPress site. It supports importing various post elements such as titles, body content, excerpts, tags, dates, and categories. The plugin is particularly useful for users looking to transfer large amounts of content from Excel or similar applications into WordPress.

You can create new posts or update existing ones by specifying the post ID in your CSV file. The plugin handles different column orders as long as the headings are correct and supports custom fields and taxonomies. It is designed for users who need to manage bulk content imports efficiently.

Best for: This plugin is suited for users who need to import large volumes of posts into WordPress from CSV files.

What it does well

  • Imports various post elements from CSV files
  • Supports custom fields and taxonomies
  • Handles non-standard characters using WordPress' built-in mechanism
  • Allows updates to existing posts
  • Multi-language support

Where it falls short

  • Only supports UTF-8 encoding
  • Writes directly to the database, which may raise data integrity issues
  • Last updated in October 2016, may not be compatible with newer WordPress versions

Verdict

CSV Importer Improved provides a straightforward solution for bulk content imports, though users should be cautious about potential data integrity issues and compatibility with newer WordPress versions.

From the developer

Jason Judge's own description of CSV Importer Improved, lightly tidied.

This WordPress plugin imports posts from CSV (Comma Separated Value) files into your
WordPress blog. It can prove extremely useful when you want to import a bunch
of posts from an Excel document or the like – simply export your document into
a CSV file and the plugin will take care of the rest.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/csv-importer-improved/

Features

  • Imports post title, body, excerpt, tags, date, categories etc.
  • Supports custom fields, custom taxonomies and comments
  • Deals with Word-style quotes and other non-standard characters using
    WordPress’ built-in mechanism (same one that normalizes your input when you
    write your posts)
  • Columns in the CSV file can be in any order, provided that they have correct
    headings
  • Multi-language support

This plugin is forked from https://wordpress.org/plugins/csv-importer/ by dvkob
in order to keep up with changes to the core WordPress.

This importer writes directly to the database. It does not go through the internal
WordPress objects for creating posts etc. That may be an advantage to you (it will
be faster for large imports) but do be aware of any data integrity issues that may arrise.

Only UTF-8 encoding is supported, both with and without Byte Order Marks (BOM).

The development repository for this plugin can be found here:

https://github.com/academe/csv-importer-improved

Please feel free to raise issues there, and submit pull requests, as well as through
the normal WordPress channels.

Usage

Click on the CSV Importer link on your WordPress admin page, choose the
file you would like to import and click Import. The examples directory
inside the plugin’s directory contains several files that demonstrate
how to use the plugin. The best way to get started is to import one of
these files and look at the results.

CSV is a tabular format that consists of rows and columns. Each row in
a CSV file represents a post; each column identifies a piece of information
that comprises a post.

You can create new posts, or update existing posts by supplying the csv_post_id
field pointing to an existing post. When updating, all field names you provide
in the CSV file will be updated – even if blank – but fields you don’t list at
the head of the CSV file will be left intact.

Basic post information

  • csv_post_id – optional, used to update an existing post.
  • csv_post_title – title of the post
  • csv_post_post – body of the post
  • csv_post_typepost, page or a custom post type.
    From 0.3.2, csv_post_type column supports custom post types.
    Refer to the WordPress
    documentation on custom post types for more info
    on how to set up custom post types.
  • csv_post_excerpt – post excerpt
  • csv_post_categories – a comma separated list of category names or ids.
    The list must be enclosed in quotes, e.g. “EC > UK, Island”.
    If a chain of subcategories does not exist, e.g. Animalia > Chordata > Mammalia
    then they will all be created and the post assigned to the end of the chain.
    The parent category can also be defined using its id, e.g.
    42 > Primates > Callitrichidae, where 42 is an
    existing category id.
  • csv_post_tags – a “quoted” comma separated list of tags.
  • csv_post_date – most standard formats are supported.
    For example, now, 11/16/2009 0:00, 1999-12-31 23:55:00, +1 week,
    next Thursday, last year are all valid. For technical
    details, consult PHP’s strtotime() function documentation.

Read the full description on the official page →

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