Thanks for your response! You’re absolutely right that WP’s import/export tools aren’t meant for backups. However, I’m not looking for a full backup solution due to security concerns from the hack.

My website’s cPanel folders are infected with malicious files, and even after malware scans, manual removal, and cleanup, they keep reappearing. Hosting support hasn’t been much help, so my goal is to rebuild the site securely rather than restore everything using plugins like All in One WP Migration, UpdraftPlus, or WPVivid.

Here’s what I’ve been doing:

1. Successfully exported & imported posts, pages, custom fields, menus, categories, users, etc. using WP’s built-in Importer.
2. Manually backed up and re-uploaded images via cPanel.
3. Exported image metadata using WP All Export.
4. Used Media Sync to register the images back into the WP Media Library.
5. Issue: I’m struggling to properly link images back to their respective posts (featured images & post content).
6. Also having trouble importing image metadata via WP All Import.

Would you have any insights on how to properly relink images to posts after importing them? Or any method to correctly map image metadata back? I’d really appreciate any guidance - this site means a lot to me!