Fitz Thiar: Thinking For The Impatient

Something struck me when reading Matt Mullenweg’s post, “WordPress Everywhere”, as he discusses the new browser-based WordPress implementation: WordPress export sucks.

We make it easy not just to get your data in, but take it out too. We build businesses that lower churn not by locking you in (Wix famously has no export) but by making it easy for you to leave. If you love somebody, set them free.

WordPress exports an XML file called WordPress eXtended RSS or WXR, and while it is awesome for importing from one WordPress instance to another, it’s not exactly convenient for anything else.

Sure, other platforms should (and some do) build importers to bring your WXR data into their platform. And if you’re self-hosted, where you can install plugins, there are 3rd party plugins to format the data just the way you want it. Although they may or may not work.

I’m trying to get my WordPress data out as Markdown files (a format which is damn well universal in 2026, used for everything from other website builders to personal knowledge bases.

Alas, I’m hosted with WordPress.com, so I’m stuck with WXR or nothing.

I pay for a Premium plan, and I’ll be damned if I’m tripling my monthly hosting cost and switching to a Business plan just to install and test plugins from 3rd-party sources.

I’m also not going to, nor should the average end user be expected to, set up a local install, export from WordPress.com, import to local, and then test the output of various plugins just to get something basic like a functional markdown file.

Pre-empting your argument here – I have done this and the last time I tried, failed to find an actively maintained plugin that actually does the job. Blog2MD hasn’t been updated in 4 years. Ultimate Markdown might do it, but now you’ve got to set up a dev environment and pay $59 a year for a license.

I’m not even talking about exporting all the weird little WordPress metafields. I’m thinking about the basics such as post content, attached images (don’t have to be formatted correctly), tags, categories and links.

If I can’t do it, you’re damn sure someone less technical than me will simply give up.

And no, I’m not asking the fine folks at Automattic to build exporters for every file format, or platform imaginable, but Markdown is, as I said earlier, an almost universal format and almost everything can work with or convert to / from a .md file.

Right now, if you’re on anything below the Business plan with WordPress.com and you want to drop your data into an offline tool like Obsidian or Logsec, you’re SOL.

This is not setting someone free.

Anywho, I’ll keep looking and trying.