| name | content-portability |
| description | 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". |
| license | MIT |
| metadata | {"author":"Respira for WordPress","author_url":"https://respira.press","version":"1.0.0","mcp-server":"respira-wordpress","category":"migration"} |
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 contentwordpress_read_page / wordpress_read_post / wordpress_get_custom_post — read full content with builder datawordpress_list_media / wordpress_get_media — media enumeration and metadatawordpress_upload_media — upload media during importwordpress_update_page / wordpress_update_post / wordpress_update_custom_post — create/update content during importwordpress_inject_builder_content — apply rewritten builder data during importwordpress_get_active_site / wordpress_get_site_context — verify connection and site detailswordpress_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
Built by Respira for WordPress
https://respira.press
