Ultimate WordPress Migration Guide for 2024 (Step by Step)
Are you thinking about migrating your website to WordPress? Whether you‘re currently using a platform like Blogger, Squarespace, or Wix, or you already have a WordPress site that you want to move to a new host or domain, this in-depth guide will walk you through the process step-by-step.
We‘ll cover everything you need to know, from why you should consider moving to WordPress in the first place, to how to choose the right hosting provider, to a detailed tutorial for migrating your site manually. We‘ll also discuss common issues that can arise during migration and how to troubleshoot them.
By the end, you‘ll be armed with the knowledge and resources needed to smoothly and successfully migrate your website to WordPress. Let‘s dive in!
Why Migrate to WordPress
First, let‘s discuss some of the key benefits of migrating your site to WordPress, especially if you‘re moving from another blogging platform or website builder:
Ownership and control: With WordPress, you fully own your website and have complete control over every aspect of it. You can customize it exactly how you want, monetize it how you want, and never have to worry about a service shutting down and taking your site with it.
Flexibility and extensibility: WordPress has a massive ecosystem of themes and plugins that allow you to extensively customize the design and functionality of your site without coding. You can easily add complex features like ecommerce, membership sites, forums, and more.
Better performance and security: WordPress itself is very lightweight and performs well. Premium WordPress hosting from top providers will ensure your site loads quickly and has near-perfect uptime. WordPress is also secure when kept updated and properly hardened.
SEO advantages: WordPress has excellent built-in SEO, and a variety of SEO plugins can optimize your site even further to rank higher in search engines. Migrating to WordPress is also a great opportunity to improve your site structure and interlinking.
Room to grow: WordPress can scale with your site as it grows, from a simple blog to a high-traffic, multi-author website. Unlike hosted platforms that limit your growth, the only bottlenecks with WordPress will be from your own hosting plan.
Choosing WordPress Hosting
If you‘re migrating to WordPress for the first time, you‘ll need to choose a hosting provider before you begin the migration process. We highly recommend choosing a reputable managed WordPress host like:
- Flywheel
- Kinsta
- SiteGround
- WP Engine
These hosts specialize in WordPress and offer premium features, performance, and support that "regular" web hosts typically don‘t. Their environments are optimized for running WordPress and include benefits like automatic backups, staging sites, built-in caching, security monitoring, and expert support staff.
Yes, these hosts cost more than budget shared hosting, but the value is well worth it. Your site will be faster, more secure, and easier to manage in the long run.
However, if you‘re on a tight budget, more affordable options like Bluehost and DreamHost still work well for low-traffic WordPress sites. We don‘t recommend going any cheaper than those.
WordPress Migration Methods
There are two main ways to migrate a website to WordPress:
- Manually (exporting and importing content pieces)
- Using a migration plugin
Manual migration involves exporting your content from your current platform, setting up a fresh WordPress installation, and importing that content into WordPress piece by piece. It requires more work but gives you the finest control over the process.
Plugin-assisted migration relies on a WordPress plugin to essentially automate transferring your site‘s content from another platform into WordPress. While quicker and simpler, it doesn‘t always move over everything cleanly.
In general, we recommend migrating manually if you‘re comfortable with the technical steps involved. This ensures the migration is comprehensive and that nothing gets missed or broken. The rest of this guide will focus on the manual migration process.
However, if you‘d rather save time and hassle, using a migration plugin like Duplicator or All-in-One WP Migration can work well too, especially for moving a site between WordPress hosts. For non-WordPress migrations, plugins exist for moving from Squarespace, Wix, and more. Always thoroughly test your migrated site before going live.
Step-by-Step Manual WordPress Migration
Now let‘s walk through the manual WordPress migration process step-by-step:
Step 1: Export your content
The first step is to export your existing site‘s content from your current platform. How you do this will vary depending on the platform.
For example, with Squarespace you‘d go to Settings > Advanced > Import/Export > Export. This will generate an XML file with your pages, posts, and other content. On Wix, you‘d use the built-in Blog Manager to save your blog posts.
WordPress itself has a native exporter under Tools > Export that will download an XML file containing your posts, pages, comments, custom fields, categories, and tags.
Step 2: Set up a fresh WordPress site
Next, you‘ll need to install a new WordPress instance, typically through your web hosting provider. Look for a one-click WordPress installer in your hosting control panel. Follow the prompts to get WordPress up and running.
Choose your site‘s title, admin username and password, and contact email. Don‘t worry about selecting a theme just yet – you can change this later once your content is imported.
Step 3: Import your content to WordPress
Now it‘s time to import your exported content into your new WordPress site. Go to Tools > Import and choose the platform you want to import from.
If it‘s a WordPress export file, you can use the "WordPress" importer. For other platforms, you may need to install the relevant importer plugin, such as "Blogger Importer" or "Medium to WordPress".
Once you‘ve uploaded your export file, WordPress will import your posts, pages, images, comments, custom fields, categories, and tags into your new site. Be patient as this process can take a while for larger sites.
Step 4: Set up URL redirects
Whenever you migrate a site, it‘s important to set up redirects from your old URLs to your new WordPress URLs. This ensures visitors clicking on links to your old site will seamlessly end up at the right content on your new site. It‘s also crucial for maintaining SEO.
The simplest way to set up redirects is with a plugin like Redirection or Simple 301 Redirects. You‘ll need to create a list of your old URLs and map them to the corresponding new URLs in WordPress.
Step 5: Update your DNS settings
If you‘re also changing domain names as part of your migration, you‘ll need to update your domain‘s DNS settings to point to your new WordPress hosting provider‘s nameservers. This will direct traffic from your domain to your new site.
Consult with your hosting provider on the specific nameservers to use. It can take up to 48 hours for DNS changes to fully propagate worldwide.
Step 6: Test and launch your migrated site
Before officially launching your migrated WordPress site, it‘s crucial to thoroughly test it to make sure everything works properly. Click through all your pages, posts, categories, tags, and custom post types. Submit test comments and orders if relevant.
Look out for any missing content, broken links or images, plugin or theme conflicts, and formatting issues. Once you‘re confident everything works properly and looks right, you can officially launch your new WordPress site. Congratulations!
Common Issues and Troubleshooting
While we‘d all love every migration to go perfectly smoothly, issues can sometimes arise. Some common ones to look out for include:
Missing content – Make sure all content was exported/imported properly and nothing was accidentally left behind. You may need to manually move over some content.
Broken media links – If images and other media didn‘t import correctly, you‘ll need to find their new WordPress URLs and update all the relevant links. The Auto Upload Images plugin can help with this.
Broken internal links – Internal links pointing to your old URL structure will break after migration. Use a link checking tool to find and update them, or a redirection plugin as mentioned above.
Slow performance – Your new WordPress site may be slow at first before caching kicks in. Give it a few days, and make sure caching and optimization best practices are in place. Consult with your host if slowness persists.
Always Start With a Backup
Before starting any migration, it‘s absolutely crucial to perform a complete backup of your existing site first. In the unlikely event that something goes wrong during the migration, you‘ll have a snapshot to restore from.
Most hosts offer automatic backups, but we also recommend periodically making manual backups and downloading them to your computer. Plugin options for full-site backups include UpdraftPlus, BackupBuddy, and VaultPress.
Maintaining SEO Through Migration
One of the biggest concerns when migrating a website is the potential impact on search engine rankings and organic traffic. To minimize any negative effects, it‘s important to properly migrate your site‘s SEO elements and settings.
This includes:
- Meta titles and descriptions
- Header tags (H1, H2, etc.)
- Image alt text
- 301 redirects from old URLs
- Sitemap
- robots.txt settings
If you‘re using an SEO plugin like Yoast or Rank Math on your old site, you can export your SEO settings and import them to the same plugin on your new WordPress site to retain them.
You‘ll also want to add your new site to Google Search Console and submit your sitemap to make sure it gets re-indexed quickly. Monitor your search rankings and traffic closely after launching your migrated site and investigate any major drops.
Fortunately, WordPress is very SEO-friendly out of the box, so you may even see a boost in rankings and traffic after migrating from a less optimized platform.
Migrating Hosts vs Domains
It‘s important to distinguish between two types of WordPress migration: migrating to a new host and migrating to a new domain.
Migrating WordPress to a new host means you‘re moving your entire WordPress site from one web hosting provider to another, but keeping your domain name the same. This doesn‘t typically require setting up URL redirects, but does involve changing your domain‘s nameservers.
On the other hand, migrating a WordPress site to a new domain means you‘re changing the primary URL of your site (e.g. from yoursite.com to newsite.com) but may be staying with the same hosting provider. In this case, proper URL redirects are essential to preserve your SEO and traffic.
Many WordPress sites will migrate to a new host and domain at the same time, in which case you‘ll need to tackle both sides of the equation.
Getting Expert Migration Help
If migrating your WordPress site manually feels too technical or time-consuming, the good news is that many WordPress hosting providers now offer expert migration services, often for free or for a one-time fee.
These "done for you" migrations can save you a ton of hassle, especially for larger or more complex sites. The host‘s migration experts will handle exporting and importing your content, setting up URL redirects, and all the other technical heavy lifting.
Notable WordPress hosts with migration services include:
- SiteGround – Free professional site transfer with all plans
- Flywheel – Free and paid migration services
- WP Engine – Automated migration plugin plus expert support
- Kinsta – Expert migration services for an additional fee
Typically these services are limited to moving WordPress sites between hosts, not migrating from other platforms like Squarespace or Wix to WordPress. But they can still save you a lot of technical overhead.
Conclusion
Migrating your site to WordPress doesn‘t have to be a daunting undertaking. With the right preparation, tools, and step-by-step process, you can smoothly move your site to the world‘s most popular CMS and start enjoying the many benefits WordPress offers.
The keys to a successful migration are:
- Choosing reliable WordPress hosting
- Fully exporting your content from your old platform
- Carefully importing into a fresh WordPress install
- Implementing proper URL redirects to prevent broken links
- Updating your DNS settings if moving domains
- Thoroughly testing your migrated site before launch
- Monitoring for any post-migration issues or SEO impacts
While the manual WordPress migration process is very doable for those comfortable with the technical steps, remember that migration plugins and "done for you" migration services from WordPress hosts are always an option to simplify the process.
If you follow this guide and take migration one step at a time, you‘ll be up and running on WordPress before you know it. Your site will be faster, more flexible, and poised for growth in 2024 and beyond.
Now over to you: Are you considering migrating to WordPress this year? What‘s holding you back? Let us know in the comments!
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