WordPress Export Guide

Jumpchart offers a new export method that allows you to transfer your project straight into WordPress, one of the most used and well developed Content Management Systems in the market.

Note: The WordPress Exporter works only on projects owned/created by accounts with a Super, Freelancer or Deluxe plan.

Our exporter uses the WXR format (WordPress eXtended RSS), which is supported by other CMSs besides WordPress but on this article we’ll only cover the step-by-step process of importing your Jumpchart project into WordPress.

Please note, this guide is aimed at importing your Jumpchart into a fresh WP installation. If you are planning on merging your Jumpchart data with an existing WP installation please do so carefully and make sure you have up-to-date backups of all your site files and your database. Either way, it is a good idea to back up your existing site before importing.

1. Download and install WordPress

Note: A lot of hosting companies nowadays offer one-click-installs for WordPress. Check with yours if this is available and you may be able to skip this step.
Note: WordPress requires at least PHP 4.3 and MySQL 4.0 installed on your server.

Installing WordPress is a very simple process that shouldn’t take long:

  1. Go the WordPress download page and get the latest version available
  2. Just follow the instructions on the official quick guide.

2. Download export file

To export your Jumpchart project into a format readable by WordPress, do the following:

  1. Inside Jumpchart, access any page of the project you want to export.
  2. Click the “Export” button at the top navigation bar to display the Export Pane.
  3. From there, you’ll see the option to export to WordPress; you’ll need to tell Jumpchart the URL that you’re using for WordPress.
  4. After you’re done, clicking the “Export to WordPress” button will get you a downloadable ZIP file containing a WordPress readable XML and some extras that we’ll discuss a bit further.

3. Import project into WordPress

Note: Make sure your Web server has permission to write to the wp-content folder since that’s where your attached images and files will be downloaded. There’s a good article about this on the WordPress documentation.
Note for WordPress 3 users: since version 3, the WordPress importer isn’t bundled with the default installation. You’ll need to install the official importer plugin from the WordPress interface (the installation screen appears when you click Tools > Import), or download it directly from this page.

Now that you have a working version of WordPress and the ZIP with your project, it’s time to tie both together:

  1. Access the WordPress admin with the instructions you got during the WordPress installation;
  2. Go to Tools > Import on the left hand navigation bar;
  3. On the list of formats, pick “WordPress” (the last one on the list);
  4. On this new screen, upload the .xml file that is inside the ZIP file you got from Jumpchart and click “Upload and import”;
  5. On the next screen, make sure you tick the “Download and import file attachments” checkbox so that WordPress can download all the file attachments from your Jumpchart project.

This should be enough to move all content from your Jumpchart project into WordPress. Now it’s time to tweak the visuals and settings.

4. Set up details and visuals

  1. Upload to the root of the WordPress install on your server the wp-content folder and the jumpchart-wordpress-install.php file that can found on the ZIP exported from Jumpchart (if you’re on Mac, merge the contents of the wp-content folder, do not replace it entirely);
  2. Access the jumpchart-wordpress-install.php file that you just copied to your server using any browser; the URL will be something like http://mydomain.com/jumpchart-wordpress-install.php. This file will take care of automatically setting up your WordPress installation to work smooth with the data you just imported from Jumpchart.

And you’re done!