Shift your widgets between WordPress installs with this plugin
Managing of WordPress may be stressful, especially if you’ve set the widgets and specified their settings – then change the default theme. Then you might find that all your settings are gone. Your WordPress widgets are worth the same as your entire investment (often time) in your website.
How to prevent the disappearance of widget settings?
it’s quite simple. We suggest you use the free Widget Importer & Exporter – which is a powerful and easy-to-run plugin for moving widgets and their settings from one WordPress installation to another. Because it backs-up widgets it is useful for theme developers who want to provide users with sample widgets.
First step, of course; please find and install the widget.
Second step, after activation, go to Tools -> Widget Import/Export
How to export data?
The widget can create an export file (in JSON format with .wie extension) out of currently active widgets. This file can be imported into other sites using this plugin or used to restore widgets to the same site later.
How to import data?
Importing is a matter of uploading an export file created by the plugin. If the plugin can not locate the “.wie” file you will receive an error message.
The results of an import are shown in a nicely formatted table with an explanation of what happened with each sidebar and widget.
Importation takes into consideration sidebars that don’t exist in the current theme (widgets imported as Inactive), widgets that already exist in the same sidebar (widgets not duplicated) and widgets that are not supported by the site (widgets not imported).
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