Let’s learn Wix to WordPress Migration, Wix is a wonderful all in one hosted service for beginners, as it allow you to setup your basis website in a very simple way. It’s drag and drop interface makes it very easy for users who don’t have any technical knowledge. Although, Wix has very simple and easy to use interface but it still has many limitations. This is the reason once users want to add more advance functionality on their website, they prefer to move on another CMS based platform. Most frequently migration is Wix to WordPres.
In this article, I will share how you can migrate your Wix website to WordPress CMS and enjoy the advance benefits for WordPress. Before starting the migration process we need to do some preparation:
- Purchase a domain (If you don’t have any)
- Purchase a Hosting Account Plan
- Setup your hosting Account and assign your domain to hosting
- Install WordPress CMS Software by using Cpanel or Manual Installation or, take hosting support team help.
- Install a WP theme to setup your new website design. There are many free and paid WordPress themes available. You can use a theme as per your choice.
- Install needed plugin for your WP website for example: Contact form7 for setting up a contact form on your website. There are so many free and paid plugins available on WP, install and setup them as per your needs.
- Create a Navigation menu and setup this.
- Manage your WP website header and footer content and look and feel as per the WordPress theme option features.
Now, we are ready to move content from your WIX website to WordPress website.
We have 3 ways to migrate our wix website content to WP website:
- Manual Migration
- Semi-Automatic Migration
- Full Automatic Migration (Paid Service)
Contents
Manual Migration
As the name suggest, we need to move every content from our wix website to our new WP website manually. It means we will have to create each page and post on WP website manually and need to copy content from Wix website and paste them on our new WP website.
We will manually have to copy and paste content and images from wix website and use them on our WP website.
Semi-Automatic Migration
Semi-automatic method can save our little time as by using this we can import content from wix website into our WordPress website automatically. We will still to create pages on WP website manually and use copy/paste method to move content from wix to WP website.
It will be done in these steps:
Import posts to WP website using Wix RSS feed
- First we need to find and save the Wix RSS feed. To do this open your wix website and add “/feed.xml” to the end of your wix website.
- If you website is xyz.com then then it would become “xyz.com/feed.xml” or “xyz.com/feed
Note: If this doesn’t show any page, it means you are using a new version of wix and we can’t use this “semi-automatic” migration method. You will have to move to either manual migration method or “full automatic migration” method.
Save your RSS File in .xml file extension
Keeping RSS feed open, right click on the page and save it as “.xml” extension on your computer.
Import to WordPress Website
- Now open your WP website admin panel
- Click on “Tools” on dashboard
- Find “RSS Importer” and “Run Importer”
- Now, upload your “RSS feed” file which you saved on “.xml” format on your computer
- Once the importor has finished, you will see that all the posts are migrated from your wix website to your WP website.
- You can see your posts on WP admin panel under Posts > All Posts
Note: You might see the posts are now showing properly on your WP website, this could be the reason of formatting issue but you can manage the formatting on your WP website.
RSS importer moves only posts from your wix website to WP website but you will have to create pages manually and also you will have move from wix to WP website.
Import Pages to WordPress Website
- Open your wix website pages one by one and create the same number of pages in your WP website and copy/paste content from wix pages to WP website pages.
Move Images from Wix to WP website
By using above semi-automatic method using the RSS feed, we can move the post content from wix website to WP website but images are still hosted on Wix. To move images from wix to WP website, you can either download them manually from mix website and upload them to WP website and update links Or, you can follow an automatic method.
Open your WP website admin panel and install a plugin named “Import External Images.:
- Install and activate the plugin
- Go to media and click “import Images”
- Click “Import Images Now” – This will download the images from your wix website and will upload them to your WP website image library and also switch over any existing image links.
Full Automatic Migration method
You can do full automatic migration from wix to wordpress website by using the third party paid services. One of the popular services is “CMS2CMS”. Let me share step by step, how we can use this service:
- Open your WP website admin panel and install a plugin named as “CMS2CMS: Automated Wix to WordPress“.
- Install this plugin and activate
- Click on “Plugins” on your dashboard and click on “Wix to WordPress”
- Create an account or, Log in to your existing account if you have any already.
- Connect your wix website, use your wix website url and “verify connection”.
- Run Migration
- You can manage your migration settings and you can see which content you want to migrate and which content you don’t need anymore.
- Once you are done with settings, you will see “Start Free Demo Migration”, this will show you a complete report with any error in mirgration as well. You will also see a price quote for this migration.
- If you are happy with migration settings and happy with price quote then click on “Complete Migration”
- Wix to WP migration will start after you complete the payment.
Final Thoughts
Migration from wix website to WP website is still little complicated as it does not provide any FREE full automatic solution. If you want to migrate your website from Wix to WordPress website yourself then use either manual transfer method or semi-automatic way. If you are ready to pay something for your transfer that take third party services for fully automatic transfer.
I hope above guide will help you to move your wix website to WordPress CMS.