How to Convert WordPress Custom Post Types

If you’re a photographer migrating to a WordPress-powered website, creating photo galleries as either Posts or Pages can be unintuitive.  You will probably be looking for a Gallery menu item on the left side of your WordPress Dashboard.  I know I sure would be.

Well, you can stop looking, because it doesn’t exist.

By default, you must post photo galleries as either a Post or a Page.  Thankfully, WordPress 3.0 introduced the ability for theme and plugin developers to create new custom post types (Galleries, Events, Workshops, etc.) with relative ease.  Each of these new custom post types can also have specific input fields beyond just the Title and Content (default WordPress Post and Page setup).  Both themes and plugins can register new custom post types in WordPress.

But what happens when you switch themes?  What happens to all the galleries you added to the Gallery Post Type (a feature that your old theme added to WordPress)?  This is the issue we are going to help you solve today.

The Problem

If your existing theme registers, say, a “gallery” post type and you decide to switch themes, your individual galleries will appear to vanish.  Voila.  Gone.  Nada.  They do still exist in the database, but, that doesn’t help you much.

The Solution

Post Type Convertr is a plugin for WordPress that converts Posts or Pages to a custom Post Type (or vice versa). In addition to this you can also convert from one taxonomy (categories or tags that are specific to your Custom Post Type) to another.  Below is a video tutorial showing how it works:

Common Use Cases

Our Sidewinder photo theme for WordPress adds a new post type called “galleries” to create beautiful side-scrolling slideshows, as seen on the Sidewinder demo site.  If you end up switching themes down the road, you will likely want to keep all the individual galleries that you added to the galleries post type.  You could use the plugin above to convert your galleries to Posts, Pages, or another post type added from another plugin or theme.  Some users might want to use the GPP Slideshow plugin, which adds a post type called “gallery”, after switching to another one of our photography themes for WordPress, like Focal Point.  Please note that the GPP Slideshow adds a post type called “gallery” while Sidewinder’s custom post type is called the plural form “galleries”.  Use the plugin above to convert your Sidewinder “galleries” post types into the “gallery” post type added by the GPP Slideshow plugin.

Suggestions

As always, we’re eager to hear your suggestions in the comments below.  Hopefully it will save you lots of time. Enjoy!

14 responses to “How to Convert WordPress Custom Post Types”

  1. Keylogger Avatar

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    -Very helpful and attractive post made by you. It contains very nice information but i have a problem please help do you can we convert our wordpress web site to a social media web site or not.

  2. Keylogger Software Avatar

    Very helpful and attractive post made by you. It contains very nice information but i have a problem please help do you can we convert our wordpress web site to a social media web site or not.

  3.  Avatar
    Anonymous

    Wow! I’ve spent hours, yesterday, moving my categories to some new taxonomies.
    Today I’ve created a new taxonomy and I needed to move all my tags to this new taxonomy (hundred of terms, abound to existing custom post type).
    I’ve found your plugin while looking for something completely different: you saved me hours of manual job!

    The only missing feature (that I didn’t need in this case, but me or other users may need in the future) is being able to exclude some terms from being converted.

  4. parkeren schiphol Avatar

    Hey!
    I want to change this custom posts, on my website to NORMAL posts. Is that also possible? Look at my website: http://parkerenbijschiphol.net/

  5. Bryan Hoffman Avatar

    One way to avoid this issue in the first place is to add the Custom Post Type through a custom functions plugin rather than the theme. This way, if you ever change themes the custom post type stays with you.

  6. Pete Avatar
    Pete

    This would be helpful to me if I could filter the posts to convert. My old theme had no custom post type and the new theme requires a “portfolio” type. If I use this plugin, however, I would end up with all my regular blog posts converted to portfolio.

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  9. BradleyDalton.com Avatar

    The Convert Post Types plugin is the best plugin for converting and changing post types in bulk. This plugin allows you to change post types by category and tag as well 

  10. Joey Avatar
    Joey

    Thanks for the information! I have been challenging taxonomies  for hours, and now everything’s so clear! I admit that this plugin is probably the best one to be found out there, and I really appreciate your sharing the tips. I’m now working on my new project called free winrar
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    samantha158

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  13. wasifaliwasi Avatar

    Thanks for your detailed explanations. this is very interesting . i like it very much .

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