How to Migrate Website to WordPress

In today’s digital world, having a dynamic and easy-to-maintain website is a must. WordPress, with its user-friendly interface and vast ecosystem of plugins and themes, has become a go-to platform for web development.

Managing your domain name account is important when configuring and changing your DNS settings to ensure a smooth transition.

If you have an existing site and are looking to migrate to another platform, WP may be one of the best options. But is it worth it? Why do businesses migrate? How to do it smoothly? What to do to convert a website to WordPress from any other platform? The migration can be done in a few steps.

Let our comprehensive guide walk you through the process.

Introduction to Migration

Migrating a website to a new host can be a complex process, but with the right guidance, it can be done efficiently. The process involves transferring a website’s files, database, and settings from one web host to another.

This can be done manually or with the help of migration plugins and tools. Before starting the process, it’s important to evaluate the current website, including its content, design, and functionality. A thorough evaluation will help identify potential issues and ensure a smooth transition to the new host.

Reasons to Convert Site to WordPress

Of course, the first question is, “Why?”. Why convert a website to WordPress? What may be the reasons behind the decision? Since you’re reading this article, you may have your reasons. See if they align with the ones we at ProCoders hear from our partners who have made the choice to convert any website to WordPress.

User-Friendly CMS

WP has an incredibly user-friendly content management system (CMS) that makes website management a breeze. It’s designed with a clean and intuitive interface that empowers both technical and nontechnical users to update, publish, and manage website content, including managing user accounts, especially when dealing with multiple authors, administrators, or contributors, with simply a copy and paste from your Google Document into a no-code editor.

WP makes it accessible to anyone, so you can focus on your content and business rather than wrestling with a complex CMS.

Rich Plugin Ecosystem

With thousands of plugins, you have the power to add functionality to your website without any coding. From SEO to e-commerce to changing themes, there’s a plugin for almost everything. These plugins are like building blocks, so you can tailor your website to your needs.

Themes for Customization

The visual identity of your website is important, and WP has an array of responsive themes and templates to help you customize its look and feel. These standard and custom themes are not just cosmetic; they are the foundation of your website’s design, layout, and overall user experience.

WP themes range from simple, clean designs with simple menu structures to complex, feature-rich layouts for various industries and styles. This level of customization allows you to make your website a true reflection of your brand identity while looking polished and professional.

SEO-Friendly

WP is inherently search engine-friendly, which is a significant advantage in the digital age. It incorporates best practices for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) directly into its architecture. This means that search engines can efficiently crawl and index WP websites, resulting in better visibility in search results. 

Additionally, WordPress provides the flexibility to further enhance your site’s SEO through plugins and practices. You can optimize each page, post, and image for search engines, improving your website’s chances of ranking higher and attracting organic traffic.

Community Support

WP benefits from a large and active community of users, developers, and other experts. This community-driven approach means you’re never alone in your journey. It provides a wealth of resources, including forums, tutorials, and expert advice. Whether you’re looking for troubleshooting tips, design inspiration, or guidance on best practices, you can tap into this vibrant community.

Evaluating the Current Website

Evaluating the existing website is a crucial step in migration. This involves assessing the website’s content, design, and functionality to identify potential issues and areas for improvement. The evaluation should include a review of the website’s link structure, internal links, and custom post types.

It’s also essential to check for broken links, restricted content, and members-only areas. By evaluating the current website, users can ensure that the new website is improved and optimized for better performance.

Setting Up a New Web Host

Setting up a new web host is a critical step in migration. This involves choosing a reliable hosting provider that meets the website’s needs and requirements. The new host should offer features such as WordPress installation, custom fields, and WP-CLI.

Users should also consider factors such as hosting plans, production environment, and multiple languages. Once the new host is set up, users can proceed with the process, which involves installing WordPress, creating a new database, and configuring the website’s settings.

Pre-Migration Preparation

Pre-migration preparation is essential to ensure a smooth transition to the new host. This involves backing up the website’s files and database, exporting content, and configuring the new host’s settings. Users should also update their domain’s name servers to point to the new host.

Additionally, users should test the website on a temporary domain to ensure that everything is working correctly. By preparing thoroughly, users can minimize downtime and ensure that the migration is completed efficiently.

How to Convert Website to WordPress Online: 3 Ways

How to convert my website to WordPress? There are multiple ways. Let’s briefly review each of them and look at the general step-by-step guide needed for the site migration.

Why general? Because each project has its distinct qualities and requirements, which adjust the roadmap. We usually talk about this with our potential partners during our Free Workshop and Discovery Phase.

1. Manual Migration

Manual migration is not a new method and it’s by far the hardest. However, it provides full control over the migration. While it can be time-consuming, it allows you to meticulously customize your WP site according to your existing website’s structure.

Before making necessary adjustments, ensure that WordPress is installed on your hosting server.

Steps for Manual Migration

1. Choose a Hosting Provider: Start by selecting a web hosting provider that supports WordPress.
2. WordPress Installation: Install the WordPress CMS on your hosting server. Many hosting providers offer one-click installations for WordPress.
3. Theme Selection: Pick a WordPress theme that aligns with the design and layout of your current website.
4. Content Migration: This involves copying and pasting text, images, and other media elements from your old site to the corresponding locations in your new WordPress site.
5. Functionality Integration: Add the necessary WordPress plugins to replicate the features and functionality of your original website.
6. Design Customization: Customize your selected WP theme to match your website’s design. This may involve adjusting colors, fonts, and layouts to make sure the transition is seamless.
7. Testing and Debugging: Thoroughly test your new site to identify and address any issues or code conflicts.
8. Go Live: Once everything is functioning correctly and your new WP site is ready, you can replace your old website with the new WordPress version.

2. Automated Migration Tools

Several automated migration tools and plugins are available to make the process of moving your website to WP easier. Go to the WordPress dashboard and navigate to the ‘Tools’ section to find the ‘Import’ option which is necessary to import content from other CMS platforms into your new WordPress site.

Steps for Automated Migration Tools

1. Choose a Tool: All-in-One WP Migration and Duplicator are some popular options.
2. Plugin Installation: Install and activate the chosen migration tool on your WordPress site.
3. Configure and Migrate: Follow the tool’s instructions to configure the migration settings like source website details and data to be transferred. Then migrate.
4. Review and Adjust: After migration review your WordPress site to ensure content and functionality has been transferred correctly.
5. Test and Debug: Test the website thoroughly to check for any issues that may have occurred during migration.
6. Go Live: Once you are happy with the migration results and have fixed any issues you can go live.

3. Hire Web Developers

If migrating your website to WP seems too much or your website is complex, hiring professional web developers with expertise in WordPress website conversion is an option.

Correctly identifying the destination site for each step involved in migration is crucial to ensure a smooth transition. This way you have peace of mind and a seamless transition and you are free from the technicalities of the process.

Steps for Hiring Web Developers

1. Choose a Web Development Team: Research and choose a web development agency or team with experience in website migration to WP.
2. Consultation and Planning: Work closely with the developers to discuss your website structure, features and specific requirements.
3. Migration: Developers will handle the entire migration process from choosing the right WordPress hosting to content migration and design customization.
4. Test and Debug: Developers will test the new WordPress site thoroughly to ensure everything is working correctly.
5. Go Live: Once developers are happy with the migration your new WP site can go live.

Considering WordPress developer salary and WordPress site cost this is a cost effective option as you get professionals to work on the conversion while you can focus on your core business!

Challenges You May Face When Migrating Any Website to WordPress

While migrating your website has many benefits, you should be aware of the challenges that can occur during the process. Viewing and analyzing the source code directly in a browser is crucial as it helps in extracting the necessary elements for website migration.

Data Loss

During migration there is a risk of losing or corrupting data especially if not handled properly. This can include content, images, user data or other important information. To mitigate this risk make sure to backup your existing website and validate the data during and after migration.

Compatibility Issues

If your original website relies on specific technologies, scripts or proprietary systems you may face compatibility issues when migrating to WP. This highlights the importance of proper planning and testing to ensure a smooth transition.

SEO and URL Structure

Changing your website’s URL structure during migration can negatively impact your search engine rankings. Inconsistent or broken URLs can result to loss of organic traffic and user experience.

Web Design and Theme Alignment

Maintaining the design of your original website can be challenging especially if you are migrating from a highly customized site.

It may require significant adjustments to ensure your chosen WordPress theme matches the design of your existing website. This can be a time consuming process that requires attention to detail.

Main Content and Media Migration

Transferring content and media like images, videos and documents is a critical part of migration. You may face challenges with file formats, compatibility and content structure. Ensuring all your content is correctly and efficiently transferred to WP while preserving its organization and integrity can be complex especially for content heavy websites.

Functionality Replication

If your existing website has unique or specialized features replicating these functionalities in WP may require extensive customization or custom plugins development.

Downtime and User Experience

Migration may require some downtime for your website. Balancing the need for migration with user experience is a challenge. To minimize disruption consider a staging or testing environment where you can test migration without affecting the live site.

Also proper redirection and communication with users can help manage expectations during migration.

Here are some of the issues you may encounter when converting a website to WordPress from a particular platform:

• Joomla – it has a different architecture and database structure which can make migration complex.
• Prestashop – E-commerce platforms like PrestaShop has unique product and order databases.
• Shopify – Migrating from a hosted e-commerce platform like Shopify requires careful handling of products, orders and customer data.

By knowing these challenges you can make a more informed decision and navigate the migration process to WP while minimizing the issues.

Plugins to Convert Existing Website to WordPress

Here are some of the website to WordPress converter-like plugins that will help in converting websites from other platforms to WP.

Using free sites like Blogger or WordPress.com for website hosting can complicate the migration process especially when you need to redirect domain when switching to a new site. Managing old URLs from these free platforms and addressing potential redirection issues is crucial.

Migrate from Joomla to WordPress with:

• FG Joomla to WP: This plugin simplifies the migration process, you can import articles, categories, images and other content from your Joomla site to WP. It also supports custom fields and metadata.
• SP Upgrade: This extension provides a straightforward way to convert your site to WordPress. It supports multiple Joomla versions and content and user migration.

Migrate from PrestaShop to WordPress with:

• Cart2Cart: Not a plugin but an online service that helps e-commerce platform migration including PrestaShop to WooCommerce which can be integrated to your WP site.

Migrate from Shopify to WordPress with:

• Cart2Cart: As mentioned earlier Cart2Cart is a versatile solution for e-commerce platform migration. It supports Shopify to WooCommerce migration making it suitable for moving your online store to WP.

Migrate from Drupal to WordPress with:

• FG Drupal to WP: Similar to Joomla migration plugin this tool helps in migrating content from Drupal to WordPress. It supports articles, categories, tags, images and other elements.
• CMS2CMS: CMS2CMS is an online migration service that supports Drupal to WordPress migration. It automates the process and ensures smooth content and media transfer.

Migrate from Wix to WordPress with:

• FG Wix to WP: This plugin can help in migrating from Wix to WordPress. It allows you to import pages, images and other content. But Wix’s closed nature can present some challenges.
• HTML Import 2: In case of Wix which doesn’t have a direct export method, one approach is to use the HTML Import 2 plugin to import Wix content as HTML pages and then organize it within WP.

Migrate from Weebly to WordPress with:

• FG Weebly to WP: Just like FG Joomla and Drupal plugins this tool can help with content migration from Weebly to WordPress. It allows import of pages, images and other elements.
• HTML Import 2: As with Wix you can use the HTML Import 2 plugin to import Weebly content as HTML pages and then arrange it within WP.

The choice of migration plugins may vary based on your specific requirements and complexity of your existing website. Research and testing is crucial to ensure a smooth transition.

Pro Tip: Import Content Using XML or CSV File

For content heavy websites importing content using XML or CSV file is a practical approach. Using a plugin with special features can give users more control over customizing their website’s background which is particularly useful for branding purposes. Let ProCoders guide you through the process:

1. Install a Data Import Plugin
   You can use WP All Import. Go to your WP dashboard, select “Plugins” and then click “Add New”. Search for the plugin you need, install it and activate it.
2. Prepare Your Data File
   Make sure your data file (XML or CSV) is well-structured and formatted according to your WordPress site’s needs. This includes defining the data fields, categories, tags and any other relevant information that needs to be imported. Your file should also include URLs to media files such as images or videos.
3. Access the Import Plugin
   In case of WP All Import you’ll find it under the “All Import” menu.
4. Create an Import Template
   Using the plugin you’ll need to create an import template that specifies how the data in your file corresponds to the WP fields. This involves mapping your existing data to the corresponding WordPress post types, categories, tags and custom fields.5. Test the Import
   Do a test import with a limited data to ensure the mapping and data relationships are correct.
5. Start the Import
   Depending on the size of your data and your server’s capacity this may take some time. The plugin will map and import posts and the rest of the data to your WordPress site, create pages and other content as specified.
6. Review and Adjust
   After the import is complete review your WP site to ensure the content is imported correctly. Check the formatting, images and media files to make sure they match your website’s design and structure.
7. Quality Assurance
   Perform thorough quality assurance to identify any issues or inconsistencies that may have occurred during the import. This includes checking for broken links, missing images or formatting discrepancies.
8. Make Your Imported Content Live
   Once you are happy with the imported content and have fixed any issues you can make it live on your website. This means publishing the imported posts or pages and making them accessible to your website visitors.

By following these steps and using data import plugins like WP All Import you can transfer large amount of content to your WP site efficiently and accurately saving you time and effort during the migration process.

You can also trust this process to ProCoders!

How ProCoders Can Help When You Convert Your Website to WordPress

Converting an existing website to WordPress can be a big task especially for larger or more complex websites. ProCoders offers professional help from planning to execution.

This includes moving files and updating configurations when moving to a new server, making sure DNS and database credentials are set up correctly for a smooth migration.

Let us handle your project with:

• Discovery Phase

Our Discovery Phase starts with a free 1.5 hour workshop where we dive into your migration project, assess the technologies involved and set the course for a detailed 3-4 week study. During this phase we review your project, choose the right technologies and create a roadmap.

• Staff Augmentation

For teams that need extra expertise for a successful migration our Staff Augmentation service is designed for the task. We hire middle to senior level developers exclusively so you get high quality skills for a smooth transition.

• Team as a Service

If you don’t have a technical team our Team as a Service is the solution. We build a custom team including project managers, developers, QA specialists, designers and more all in-house – no HR headaches for you.

Our team of experts is WP savvy and will make sure your website retains its functionality, design and SEO rankings during the migration process. We provide full technical support, English communication and years of experience to make your WordPress migration a success.

Conclusion

Converting an existing site to WordPress is a strategic move to boost your online presence. It offers flexibility, scalability and user friendliness that WP is known for. A new design should not just replicate the old design but use the opportunity to improve and enhance the website overall.

With the right plan, plugins and professional support you can make the transition and retain the essence of your original site. You can always find this support with ProCoders!