If there is one place that WordPress fails on shared hosting environments it is when you have to import large WXR files.
WXR files are essentially XML files that WordPress allows you export that contain all your posts, tags, authors and categories, but once they start to get above 5 – 8 Megs in size they become difficult if not impossible to import as upload sizes are restricted on shared hosts.
Traditionally when you were moving a site, you could export all of your information from your database an SQL file and import that into a new database on your host, but even that can run into restrictions of size, forcing you to manually split up the file into chunks and upload each individually.
With the new network feature of WordPress 3, which allows you to host multiple WordPress sites on a single install, even the SQL import becomes very difficult for the average user, pretty much forcing you to go the WXR route.
Enter WXR File Splitter.
WXR File Splitter is a Windows only (XP, Vista, Win 7) , freeware application that takes those huge WXR files and splits them up into manageable chuncks that you can hust imorpt into WordPress 1 after another.
This past week I’ve had to migrate 1 site with a 48 Meg WXR file and within 3 minutes WXR File Splitter had loaded in the file and split it into 36 different files that I could easily import 1 after the other.
As a tip, one of the biggest problems you’ll have is the size of the file your host allows you to upload. This can bee seen on the import screen of WordPress. Mouse over all of the files created by WXR file splitter before starting the upload process to ensure none of them are larger than the max upload size. If they are larger, then you can just lower the number of items per files and split the WXR file again.
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