DEV Community: Import Export by RockStarLab

Introducing Import Export by RockStarLab: WP Content Operations Toolkit (+ Free 1-Year PRO License)

Import Export by RockStarLab — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 16:07:46 +0000

Hey dev.to community! 👋

We recently launched Import Export by RockStarLab — a new WordPress content operations toolkit designed to handle complex site migrations, CSV/XML/JSON/XLSX imports, media library folder sync, and background job scheduling without the usual headaches.

Since we are actively refining the workflow and looking to make it the most reliable import/export plugin out there, we need your honest developer feedback, bug reports, and feature requests!

To gather real-world usage insights, we are giving away 1-Year FREE PRO Licenses in exchange for your feedback and thoughts.

🎁 What’s included in the PRO version?

🛒 Full WooCommerce Support: Products, orders, coupons, refunds, customers, reviews, and attributes.
⚙️ WordPress Core Entities: Custom post types, ACF/custom fields, menus, users, taxonomy terms, and comments.
🔄 Content Updater & Field Transformations: Clean up and transform data on the fly during migration.
🛠️ Deep Migration Tooling: Keep post relationships, Elementor layouts, and SEO metadata completely intact.

🔑 How to get your FREE 1-Year PRO License:

Install the free version: Download it from WordPress.org or install it directly from your WP Admin dashboard (Plugins → Add New → search for Import Export by RockStarLab).
Select PRO: Upgrade to any PRO plan on our site or via the plugin dashboard.
Apply Code: Use the promo code NEW2026 at checkout to drop the price to $0 (100% discount, no credit card required).
Test & Share Feedback: Test it out on your staging, local, or live environments, and send us a quick email at hi@wpimportexport.com with your technical feedback, issues, or suggestions!

Whether you’re running a small blog migration or managing massive WooCommerce inventories, we’d love for you to give it a spin.

Feel free to drop any questions or initial thoughts in the comments below! Thanks for helping us build a better tool for the developer community. ❤️

How to Export and Import WordPress Users With ACF Custom Fields (Including Images)

Import Export by RockStarLab — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 11:05:20 +0000

The gap in WordPress's default user export

WordPress's native export tools treat a user as a fixed shape: email, login, display name, role, done. That's fine until your site does anything beyond the basics.

If you're running a membership platform, a multi-author blog, or team profiles, chances are most of the interesting data isn't in WordPress's default user table at all — it's in Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) attached to the user. Avatars, company info, membership tier, social links, bios with structure.

Native export doesn't know any of that exists. It has no concept of ACF fields, and the moment one of those fields holds an image rather than text, migration breaks completely — you either lose the field or end up with a dead URL pointing at a file that never made the trip.

What a proper user migration needs

To move users along with their full profile, you need three things a default export doesn't give you:

Filtering — by role, post count, registration date, or even by an ACF field value (e.g. "only users on the Pro membership plan").
Field-level control over both standard WordPress fields and any ACF fields registered for user profiles.
Image handling — so an avatar or photo stored in a custom field gets downloaded and reattached on the destination site, not just referenced by a broken URL.

I built this into Import Export by RockStarLab as a PRO feature (new users get PRO free for one month). Here's the shape of the workflow.

Exporting users with ACF fields

1. Choose Users as the content type

From Import Export by RockStarLab → Export, select Users. If ACF is active on your site, the plugin automatically detects registered ACF user fields and adds them to the available field list — no extra configuration needed.

2. Filter which users to export

Rather than exporting your entire user table, filter by:

Role (administrators, editors, authors, subscribers)
Post count
Registration date
A specific ACF field value (e.g. membership level)

3. Select fields — standard and ACF

Standard fields include email, login, display name, first/last name, description, and website URL. If ACF is registered on user profiles, those fields show up in the same list. You can add all fields at once or drag in only what you need.

4. Pick an export format

Format	Best for
CSV	Moving users between WordPress sites
XLSX	Manual review, editing, client sharing
JSON	Developer-facing, structured workflows
XML	System-to-system integrations
ODS	LibreOffice / OpenDocument workflows

A CSV row for a user with ACF fields looks roughly like this:

user_email,user_login,display_name,acf_company,acf_membership_tier,acf_avatar
jane@example.com,janedoe,"Jane Doe","Acme Inc","pro","https://site.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/jane.jpg"

Note the acf_avatar column — that's a plain URL in the export file, but on import it becomes an actual media attachment, not just a stored string.

Importing users on the destination site

1. Upload and preview

Go to Import Export by RockStarLab → Import, choose Users, upload the file. The preview step shows the first rows so you can confirm the file was parsed correctly before anything touches the database.

2. Map fields

If the file was generated by the same plugin, Auto Map connects columns to the correct WordPress and ACF fields automatically. Importing a hand-built CSV instead? Map fields manually by dragging columns into place.

3. Set duplicate detection

For users specifically, match by email — it's the one field guaranteed to be unique per account. This lets the importer update an existing user instead of creating a duplicate.

4. Enable automatic media import

This is the part that matters most for ACF image fields. Turning on Automatically Import Media Files tells the plugin to:

detect image URLs inside the imported data
download those images
add them to the destination site's Media Library
reattach them to the correct ACF field on the imported user profile

Without this step, an ACF image field just imports as a URL string pointing at a file that may not even exist on the new server.

Verifying the import

Don't trust the success message alone:

Open Users on the destination site and confirm the accounts are there.
Open a couple of profiles and check the ACF section — both text and image fields.
Check the Media Library to confirm avatar/photo files actually landed.

Free vs. PRO

Feature	Free	PRO
Import/export posts and pages	✅	✅
CSV, JSON, XML, XLSX, ODS formats	✅	✅
User import/export	❌	✅
ACF user field export	❌	✅
Auto-import media from ACF fields	❌	✅
Transformation functions	❌	✅

Edge cases worth knowing about

ACF repeater fields and multi-value fields need to be flattened or restructured for CSV — JSON export is a better fit if your user profiles use repeaters heavily.
Always run a small test batch (2-3 users) before a full migration, especially the first time you enable automatic media import.
Back up the destination database before running a production import.

Where to go from here

Full walkthrough with screenshots: Export and Import WordPress Users with ACF Custom Fields

Plugin (free, with a 1-month PRO trial covering this feature): Import Export by RockStarLab

If you've hit edge cases with ACF repeaters, flexible content fields, or other structured user data during a migration, I'd like to hear about it — that's exactly the kind of thing I'm trying to stress-test next.

How to Export Only Selected Files from the WordPress Media Library

Import Export by RockStarLab — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 12:37:56 +0000

The problem with WordPress's default media export

If you've built anything on WordPress long enough, you know the built-in export tool (Tools → Export) is all-or-nothing. Pick "Media" and it exports the entire library — every image, PDF, and file ever uploaded — as one XML file.

That's fine for a full site migration. It's not fine when you're:

syncing a handful of files from staging to production
handing off media for a single client project
pulling files tied to one specific post or feature
building a small, focused CSV for review instead of a full audit

Doing a full export for any of these means bigger payloads, slower transfers, and a higher chance of hitting server timeouts on shared hosting — for files you probably didn't even need.

Selecting files instead of exporting everything

This is the gap Import Export by RockStarLab closes with its "Export Selected Media" workflow (PRO feature — new users get PRO free for a month). Instead of writing a filter and hoping it matches the right files, you select files directly in the Media Library UI you already use daily.

Here's the flow:

1. Select files in the Media Library

Go to Media → Library, switch to Bulk Select, and check the files you want. Nothing new to learn — it's the same interface you already use to manage media.

An Export button appears once you've selected something.

2. Export opens with your selection pre-filtered

Clicking Export opens the plugin's export workflow, with your selected files already loaded as the filter. No rebuilding search queries, no re-selecting anything.

3. Choose which fields to export

You can export everything (ID, title, file URL, MIME type, size, width/height, upload date) or scope it down. Example of the kind of row you get in the output:

ID,Title,URL,Type,Size,Width,Height,Date
142,"product-hero.jpg","https://site.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/product-hero.jpg","image/jpeg",245678,1920,1080,"2026-09-01"

4. Export to CSV

CSV keeps the output portable — easy to diff, review in a spreadsheet, or pipe into another tool if you need to.

Importing on the other side

On the destination site: Import Export by RockStarLab → Import, choose Media as the content type, upload the CSV. You get a preview of the first rows before committing — useful for a sanity check on a production site.

Since the CSV was generated by the same plugin, field mapping is one click (Auto Map) — no manual column matching. If you're importing a CSV from somewhere else, you can map fields by hand instead.

Duplicate handling matters here. Matching by filename during import is the safest default — it prevents the same file from being imported twice if it already exists on the destination.

Run the import, then check Media → Library on the destination to confirm the files landed correctly.

Full export vs. selected export vs. filtered export

Workflow	Best for
Full media export	Complete site migrations, full media audits
Selected media export	Moving a manually picked set of files
Filtered media export	Rule-based exports — by file type, size, or upload date

If you're scripting a repeatable migration (e.g. CI/CD between staging and prod), filtered export is usually a better fit than manual selection. Selected export is for the "I know exactly which 7 files I need" case.

A few things to watch for

Back up the destination site's database before importing into production.
Match by filename for duplicate detection unless you have a reason not to.
Review the destination Media Library after import — don't just trust the success message.
If you're doing this repeatedly, filters (by type/date/size) will save more time than manual selection.

Where to go from here

Full walkthrough with all the screenshots: Export Selected Files From the WordPress Media Library

Plugin (free, with a 1-month free PRO trial for this feature): Import Export by RockStarLab

If you've automated media migrations between WordPress sites some other way — WP-CLI, a custom script, anything — I'd like to hear about it in the comments.

How We Built a Fileless Page Sync Workflow for Elementor & WordPress

Import Export by RockStarLab — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 08:43:56 +0000

If you manage WordPress development pipelines, you know that moving page layouts between Staging and Production is surprisingly clunky.

While full-database dumps work fine for initial deployments, they are completely unviable when pushing isolated layout updates to a live site that is actively receiving orders or user comments.

For years, the standard workaround has been file-based exports (JSON/XML/CSV). But from an engineering perspective, saving dynamic layout metadata to local disk just to re-upload it seconds later introduces unnecessary IO, file handling overhead, and URL re-mapping edge cases.

Here is how a fileless, direct site-to-site synchronization model works under the hood for complex Page Builders like Elementor.

The Engineering Problem: What Makes Elementor Pages Complex?

An Elementor page isn't just a block of HTML stored in wp_posts.post_content. It is a multi-layered data structure:

Serialized Layout JSON: Stored in wp_postmeta under _elementor_data. It contains nested arrays of sections, columns, widgets, custom CSS, and responsive rules.
Global & Element Settings: Page-level settings stored in _elementor_page_settings.
Asset References: Hardcoded Attachment IDs, CSS background URLs, and inline SVGs buried deep within JSON key-value pairs.

When you export this data to a standard CSV or XML file, static media IDs often break on the receiving end unless the importer explicitly parses every JSON branch and rewrites attachment mappings.

Architectural Comparison: File Pipeline vs. Remote Payload Stream

TRADITIONAL FILE ROUTE:
Site A -> Generate File -> Write to Disk -> User Download -> User Upload -> Site B Parse

DIRECT SYNC ROUTE:
Site A (REST API / Secret Key) ---------> Site B Engine

1. Traditional File-Based Export/Import

Pros: Great for offline backups, git versioning of template files, and isolated environment migrations where no network bridge exists.
Cons: Manual intervention required, extra local storage, higher risk of user error during routine staging updates.

2. Direct Peer-to-Peer Payload Sync

Pros: Zero file IO, instant execution via API payload streaming, automated attachment relocation, and selective post updating.
Cons: Requires a secure network connection and initial handshake between environments.

How Direct Content Sync Handshakes Work

To achieve fileless sync without compromising server security, two WordPress instances communicate via paired secret keys rather than raw user credentials:

Step 1: Secure Pairing Handshake

Site B (Production) generates a unique remote endpoint configuration containing its base URL and a secret API hash. Site A (Staging) stores these credentials. Once saved bidirectional, both sites can verify request signatures using standard authorization headers.

Step 2: The Payload Push/Pull Mechanism

When a developer initiates a Push operation for a specific Elementor page:

The local sync engine queries wp_posts and associated wp_postmeta keys (including _elementor_data).
The payload is sanitized and serialized into a structured JSON payload.
Site A transmits the payload directly to Site B's endpoint over HTTPS.

Step 3: Remote Processing & Media Relocation

On receiving the payload, Site B’s engine executes three operations:

Target Mapping: Checks whether to construct a new post record or update an existing ID to preserve current URL slugs (/about/ stays /about/).
Recursive Asset Scanning: Parses the JSON trees in _elementor_data for remote image URLs. It fetches these binary files in the background, registers them in Site B's Media Library, and replaces old image paths with new internal attachment IDs.
Cache Flushing: Clears Elementor CSS cache files (wp-content/uploads/elementor/css) to force dynamic style regeneration.

Workflow Benchmarks: Staging to Production

Metric	Manual File Export (XML/CSV)	Direct Content Sync
Data Transport	Local Disk (Download/Upload)	Direct HTTPS POST Stream
Media Relocation	Frequently requires manual URL search/replace	Automatic Media Library ingestion
Page ID Collision	Often creates duplicate slugs (`/page-2/`)	In-place update preserving target IDs
Ideal Context	Archiving & offline backups	Active development & staging deployment

Conclusion & Implementation

For offline archiving and template distributions, classic CSV and JSON file exports remain an essential tool in any developer's arsenal. However, when automating active staging-to-production pipelines, moving to an API-driven Push/Pull sync model eliminates repetitive file handling and speeds up deployment cycles.

If you want to inspect or test this workflow, we implemented this logic in the free Content Sync module inside Import Export by RockStarLab. You can read the complete setup guide in our technical walkthrough: How to Sync Elementor Pages Between Sites Using Blocksy Theme.

What strategies are you using to sync isolated page updates between environments? Let's discuss in the comments below!