How We Fixed News Post Imports in WordPress (And Prevented Broken Links)

Issue Background

During the migration of a legacy website to a new WordPress environment, two major problems appeared after the first import:

➡️ Duplicate Featured Images:

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Multiple news posts ended up displaying the same featured image, hurting visual consistency.

➡️ Broken External Links:

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A custom “external link” field triggered errors if the URL wasn’t perfectly formatted with https://, breaking functionality and frustrating users.

Both issues made the new site look unprofessional and broke user trust.

Diagnosis

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We ran a detailed audit of the import scripts and custom fields setup:

✔️ The duplicate images came from a scraping tool that didn’t handle similar metadata properly—often assigning one image to multiple posts.

✔️ The broken links traced back to a URL validation rule rejecting plain text or incomplete URLs in the “external link” field.

Resolution Steps

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1️⃣ Refining the Import Script

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We rebuilt the import process to fetch individual featured images for each post, guaranteeing unique images across the site.

2️⃣ Image Optimization

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We manually resized and compressed any oversized featured images to reduce load times and improve site performance.

3️⃣ Fixing the External Link Field

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By converting the external link field from strict URL validation to plain text, we eliminated errors while keeping flexibility for editors.

4️⃣ Conditional Logic for Display

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Now, external links open in new tabs and behave as outbound references. Regular posts stay native to the site for a seamless experience.

Final Outcome

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With custom coding, content clean-up, and thoughtful UI handling, we transformed the chaotic import into a polished news archive. Every post now displays properly, links behave reliably, and the whole system works the way it should.

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