How-to Fix Missing Featured Images After Migrating WordPress From One Domain to Another Domain

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There is no doubt WordPress might be the most used CMS right now. Its popularity is because of the easiness in implementation, usage, and usability. It is designed to do whatever you could do on a website. But this does not mean WordPress is perfect without any problems. There are problems in it but, luckily, there is a solution for almost every problem. BTW, the above image does not mean you need to play with the XML file. This is a snippet of what WordPress produces when doing an export.

As you have noticed, I have moved back to my old and favorite domain ComputeLogy.com from Megamean.com. I moved every bit of data back to ComputeLogy. The whole process went smoothly. The guys at iFastNet are amazing. They helped me whenever I asked for. Here is a piece of advice for you based upon mine experience. Always download images from the old domain and upload them to the new domain using FTP client. This will make sure you never miss any image.

After everything done, I noticed that featured images are not attached to posts and thus, not showing up. When I noticed that featured images are not attached, I did a mistake. Instead of asking iFastNet support, which was the easiest way to get a supposed to be the solution, I googled the problem. There were a couple of repetitive solutions like running queries in MySQL. I tried those solutions but none fixed the missing featured images. But those solutions did fix (probably, not sure) one problem that all posts got their images fixed but featured images.

I send an email to my friend Sujay asking for help. He mentioned a few solutions but, unfortunately, none worked. I was getting frustrated. I thought to google last time before fixing missing images manually. And there was the solution. I found a plugin whose sole purpose is to fix the missing featured image. The plugin name is Export Featured Images.

Simply, download Export Featured Images from WordPress repository here in your old blog. Activate it. Open it from Tools menu. Select the options, download XML file by pressing the Export button. Then upload that XML file in the new blog using WordPress import feature. After that, purge all cache if any. That’s it. Your missing featured images will be on their places again. Just remember, if the post did not have featured image in the old blog, it will not have featured image in the new blog as well.

The image below shows the available options in the Export Featured Images plugin.

The Missing Featured Images has not been updated since some time, but most probably it will work. There are some people saying that it is not working for them. Also, I do think you will get any help from the developer. If you are a WordPress developer, why do not you fork it?