WP All Import: How to Bulk Import A Category Taxonomy Into WordPress from CSV

My firm works on very large WordPress integrations and implementations, having to migrate tons of data from old instances or another content management system (CMS) altogether. Often, this includes importing products for WooCommerce, adding locations into a custom post type, or building a taxonomy with known inputs. If you wanted, for example, to add categories by country, state, or province… you could be working in WordPress for hours doing the data entry. Thankfully, there’s an amazing WordPress plugin that automates this process by enabling you to import a Comma Separated Value (CSV) file for any element within WordPress.

On Martech Zone, we’ve been expanding our Acronyms page to a point where it’s becoming unmanageable. It’s a huge list fo sales and marketing technology acronyms, their abbreviations, and their description. The page loads quite slow because it’s so large and it’s not marked up properly in HTML for organic search. So, I’m doing some development on the site to build out a custom post type and resulting taxonomy so that I can improve the speed, ability to filter the list, and overall rankings.

Alphanumeric Categories

To start, I want alphanumeric categories to assign to each acronym, from 0 through 9 and A through Z. Adding those would take quite a bit of time, so I built out a CSV file with the category name, slug, and description:

How to Import My Category CSV

By adding the WP All Import plugin, I can easily walk through their wizard to upload the CSV, map my fields, set up the unique identifier, templatize any additional fields, and import the categories.

Now, I can go back to the custom taxonomy I built in WordPress (I called it Alphabet) and you can see that all of the categories are properly named, slugs applied, and descriptions ar fully populated. And, instead of spending an hour on the process, it only took a few minutes!

Note: My acronmy solution is still under development so you won’t see it if you click through today. Be on the lookout in the near future, though!

WP All Import: Features

I’m so impressed with WP All Import that I’ve added it to our Best WordPress Plugins list. I’ve also purchased a full license for my firm, which enables a ton more capabilities, including:

• Use any XML, CSV, or Excel file
• Import or Export Data from any element in WordPress or WooCommerce, including users
• Supports very large files, and any file structure
• Compatible with custom plugin and theme fields
• Images, categories, WooCommerce, Advanced Custom Fields, Custom Post Type UI, etc.
• Simple interface and a flexible API
• Powerful scheduling options

Try WP All Import’s Sandbox Environment WP All Import Plugin

Disclosure: I’m not an affiliate of WP All Import, but I am using other affiliate links in this article.