Can you switch from wix to wordpress? How to ace your CMS Migration

root April 5, 2022April 15, 2022

Back when you first started on the web, you probably wanted an easy-to-use website builder, and Wix is a suitable fit for this. Wix’s drag-and-drop interface is incredibly intuitive. Using it, users can build beautiful-looking personal sites, portfolios, or even simple blogs and online stores in no time at all.
However, if you’re reading this article, you are probably tired of Wix’s limitations. Perhaps your small business is growing and you need a platform with more features? Or perhaps you need a publishing tool with an advanced content management system?

WordPress is a popular choice for moving to WordPress for its open-source framework and wide array of free and premium themes and plugins. To see how you can migrate your website and content from Wix to WordPress, this article covers the various ways you can do so, including:
1. Added content from your Wix account to WordPress
2. By using a migration plugin
3. Manually copying and pasting each page
At this point, it’s worth mentioning that if you’re not familiar with the process, there’s a chance some of your content will be lost. In this case, your newly designed website won’t meet your expectations. It’s worth considering hiring an expert to help with the migration process.
So, let’s get started.

Wix to WordPress – The Differences

There are many pertinent things to keep in mind when deciding whether to switch from Wix to WordPress. Most importantly, you might not want to switch from Wix to WordPress if your Wix website still meets your needs.
These are the few main differences between Wix and WordPress, so be sure to factor them into your decision.

Wix is a closed, all-in-one platform that suffers from design limitations. It’s designed to be easy and fast to use, but not to be infinitely flexible. Meanwhile, WordPress allows you to customize your design almost no matter what.

If you switch to WordPress, however, you own 100% of your data and can control it completely.

It provides an easy-to-follow SEO Wiz to help you optimise your site, but you have limited options beyond that. WordPress, on the other hand, gives you complete control. You can use SEO plugins like Yoast, optimise your site for speed, tinker with advanced options for indexing, crawling, and blocking your website.

In contrast, WordPress requires you to handle your own security, updates, and backups. Alternatively, you can opt for managed WordPress hosting or hire an expert to handle this task for you.

You know ahead of time how much you will spend each year on Wix. However, WordPress is more difficult to quantify, since costs depend on your choice of web hosting service, domain name, themes, and plugins, etc.

As a result, Wix won’t cause you any harm. Therefore, provided you stay within the limits of its framework WordPress, on the other hand, imposes no limits, but you have to manage it yourself.

Before beginning the migration process there are a few steps you should take:

If you’re going with WordPress, you have many managed-hosting providers to choose from – WPX and Kinsta are two examples.
Next, install WordPress and set up your site. You can install WordPress with a single click if you’ve selected a managed hosting provider.
Setup your WordPress permalinks once you get access to your WordPress dashboard. By setting your permalinks to include the post title, you will be able to optimize your migrated content for SEO automatically. Your permalink settings can be found under “Settings > Permalinks.”
Last but not least, you’ll need to choose a new theme, since you can’t use the same template you were using with Wix. Of course, you can hire a web developer to create a custom theme that looks like your old one.
In regards to themes, WordPress brings good news. Not only can you choose from thousands of templates, but you can change them at any time without losing your content. Wix can’t do this, and you’ll be glad to get rid of it.
After you have completed these first steps, it’s time to get started with your Wix to WordPress migration. Here are the methods you can use:

Import External Images and Website Content From Wix to WordPress

import design
Unfortunately, Wix is a closed platform and does not provide a reliable way of migrating blog content. However, the Wix RSS feed can be downloaded in order to automate the process. To download the Wix feed, add /feed.xml or /blog-feed.xml to your Wix URL This should populate a site with code. Right-click anywhere on the page and save the file to your computer. Navigate over to WordPress’s “Tools” section and click “Import.” Click the “Install now” link under “RSS.”
Choose your feed.xml file, and then select the “Import” button Upload the file, and once it’s done, you’ll see a notification Once it’s done, you’ll get a confirmation Next, check your blog posts to make sure they were exported correctly. You can do this by browsing to “Posts” > “All Posts” and clicking “View” under each post.
It is also important to note that your text content has migrated, but unfortunately, your images have not. Fortunately, you can migrate these images manually or use a plugin to do this. The Auto Upload Image Plugin is one option. You will then need to adjust the formatting.

Migration Plugin

If you’re not confident about migrating your content, then a migration plugin might be able to help you (mostly). Plugins do the bulk of the heavy lifting for you, but of course, you won’t be able to control and participate in the process as much.
In any case, a plugin can help make the migration process much more efficient. To use this method, you will need to install your WordPress migration plugin. Next, you will need to connect your Wix site. Finally, you can run the automated migration process.
Every plugin will come with user instructions, so you should be able to easily follow the process step by step. Premium plugins will also migrate your metadata, transfer your images, and set up 301 redirects.

Manually copy and paste your Website

As a last resort, you can handle the entire Wix to WordPress migration process manually. If you only have a small site or changed your mind early on about Wix, this might not be too much of a hassle, but if you have several blog posts and Wix pages, it will take you many hours. You might also miss out on some content or settings, such as meta tags, titles, and URL slugs. Once you migrate and say goodbye to your Wix site, you won’t be able to get those things back – and you do not want that to happen!
Your first step in the manual migration process will be to create the exact number of pages on your new WordPress site as you had on your Wix site. Next, you will have to go into each piece of content on your Wix site and manually copy it over to your WordPress pages. The same goes for images, which you will need to manually upload to your WordPress media gallery.

What To Do After the Wix to WordPress Migration

Having covered how to migrate your site to your brand-new WordPress site, here are some best practices to consider to make sure your WordPress site is ready to be your new hub on the web:

You will need to re-create your navigation menus since you cannot migrate them using the methods above.

Redirection ensures visitors frequenting your old site automatically land on your newly designed one This involves pasting a simple redirection code into your WordPress theme/js/directory If you aren’t sure how to do it, there are plenty of tutorials online that walk you through it.

Take advantage of WordPress plugins and widgets Now that you’ve switched to WordPress from Wix, you can use hundreds of plugins and widgets to enhance security, boost SEO, create popups and contact forms, insert calendars, and so on You can even create a fully-featured eCommerce store with the Woo Commerce plugin.

Verify all permalinks and internal links If you set up your permalinks before migrating, this should already be in order Other order. However,m now Also, ensure all internal links are working correctly. Faulty links that lead nowhere could hinder the performance of your website and hamper your SEO.

Although Wix doesn’t make the migration process easy, with these methods, you can still migrate your blog content without too much hassle. The key is to be methodical and unhurried to ensure an accurate migration.