The Import / Export tool lets you move your FotoGrids data between WordPress sites or keep a portable backup of your Galleries, Albums, items, tags, settings, statistics, and templates. Exports are saved as standard JSON or XML files that you can store, share with a developer, or reimport on any FotoGrids installation.
Location FotoGrids → Tools → Import / Export
Exporting Your Data #
What can be exported
A single export file can include any combination of the following data types:
- Galleries — Gallery posts, their settings, and all post meta
- Albums — Album posts and their settings
- Gallery–Album relationships — which Galleries are assigned to which Albums, and in what order
- Items — all item-level data per Gallery (titles, captions, descriptions, alt text, positions, external URLs, EXIF, custom data), including YouTube and Vimeo video items with their link, caption, playback settings and poster
- Tags, People & Locations — the tag library (all three metadata types)
- Item metadata — the joins between items and their tags, people, and locations
- Settings — plugin-wide settings (media sizes, gallery and album defaults, autosave, whether data is deleted on uninstall, and the Share usage data choice). On import, each setting is chosen on its own, and none is chosen by default. An export made with FotoGrids 1.2.0 or earlier holds a single set of defaults. Importing it applies that set to both Gallery Defaults and Album Defaults.
- Statistics — view and share counts for Galleries, Albums, and items
- Templates — saved Gallery templates, per user
By default, all data types are included. You can deselect any types you do not need before downloading.
Galleries and Albums are exported whatever their status — published, draft, pending, scheduled or private — and are imported with the same status and date.
Export format
Exports are available as JSON (default) or XML. Both formats contain identical data — choose whichever is easiest to work with for your use case. JSON files are generally more compact and easier to inspect in a text editor.
The downloaded filename follows the pattern fotogrids-export-YYYY-MM-DD.json (or .xml).
Importing Data #
The import process runs in two phases: Analyse and Execute. This two-step approach lets you review what the file contains before anything is written to the database.
Phase 1 — Analyse
Upload your export file (JSON or XML — the format is detected automatically). FotoGrids reads the file and returns a summary of what it contains: how many Galleries, Albums, items (and how many of those are images and how many are videos), tags, templates, and statistics are present, along with the FotoGrids version and site URL the file was exported from. Nothing is imported yet.
Review the summary to confirm the file is what you expect before proceeding.
Phase 2 — Execute
After reviewing the analysis, select which data types to import and choose how to handle any conflicts. FotoGrids then writes the data to the database inside a single transaction — if anything fails, the entire import is rolled back and nothing is written.
Settings is never selected by default, even when the file contains it. Select it to list the settings the file holds, then select each one to bring over — every other setting on this site stays as it is. Selecting Share usage data opts this site in to or out of sharing usage data, as switching it on the Advanced tab does. After the import, the result shows which settings changed.
Conflict resolution
When a Gallery or Album with the same slug already exists on the destination site, you choose one of three options:
| Setting | Galleries / Albums (on conflict) |
| Options | Skip Overwrite Duplicate |
| Default | Skip |
- Skip — the existing Gallery or Album is left unchanged. Items, relationships, and metadata that reference the existing ID are still imported and linked to it.
- Overwrite — the existing Gallery or Album’s post meta is updated with the imported settings. The post itself (title, slug, ID) is not replaced.
- Duplicate — a new Gallery or Album is created with a modified slug (e.g.
my-gallery-1), leaving the existing one untouched.
A note on items and attachments
An export lists every Media Library file its items use, by name, size and a fingerprint of the file’s content. On import, each item links to the file on the destination site that has the same name (or the same name with the -1, -2 WordPress adds to a duplicate) and identical content. To bring items to a different site, upload the same original files to its Media Library before you import.
An item whose file isn’t on the destination site is skipped, and nothing takes its place — neither an existing file nor one uploaded later. The same applies to a Gallery’s or Album’s Featured / Share Image, and to an item’s tags, people, locations and view counts.
Within the same site (for example, restoring from a backup), items keep their files. A file exported before FotoGrids 1.3.0 doesn’t list its files, so its items import only on the site it came from.
An item’s title, caption, description and alt text are written to its Media Library attachment when the item is new to the site. Items already in a Gallery on the destination keep their current text.
YouTube and Vimeo video items don’t depend on the Media Library, so they import between sites as well. Each imported Gallery gets its own copy of its videos. Overwriting a Gallery on the same site restores its videos’ links, captions, playback settings and posters from the file, without adding copies.
Importing with Overwrite updates post meta on existing Galleries and Albums. This cannot be undone. Take a fresh export before running a destructive import on a production site.
The Operation Log #
A log of the last 50 import and export operations is stored automatically. Each entry shows the operation type (import or export), a summary of what was processed, the date and time, and whether it completed successfully or partially (when some items were skipped). The log is accessible via the History tab, which sits alongside the Export and Import tabs at the top of the tool.
