How to Transfer my WIX Site to WordPress – Easy 3 Method Guide
By Arshath | November 12, 2024
As a non-technical person and small business looking for a user-friendly interface to manage and build the website, I believe Wix is the perfect platform. Wix does itself have AI-generating tools to add posts and pages and do some SEO inputs, as well as unique templates with an easy-to-customize basic setup for a website. But why do people prefer to Transfer Wix to WordPress if they offer them a convenient way?
Let’s further delve into this topic and understand why you need to transfer Wix to WordPress which will be considered one of the best choices for everyone.
Why Transfer Wix to WordPress?
If you want to start building a website, Wix will be an appealing platform at first glance and make you feels more convenient, easy to manage, take care of technical aspects, and budget-friendly options to create a site, etc.
But things take a U-turn when your business tends to grow at a large scale or at a different path where limitations in the Wix features will become apparent as it will not meet your requirement for the website growth. At this stage, you need more control over your website content building and customization.
Major Concern in Wix:
1. Can’t Add Forms to Blog Posts
2. Once the site is live, can’t switch templates.
3. Can only use Wix provided Tools.
4. Cannot access or change the html code of your site.
So, WordPress comes as the solution for your website to move away from Wix.
Difficulty Face to Transfer Wix to WordPress:
1. There won’t by any import and export option available to take any backup of the Wix website.
2. You need to manually download the images and upload them to WordPress from Wix.
3. Only posts can be migrated using RSS feed but pages can only be recreated in WordPress manually literally means you need to spend some time again.
4. Since migrating post is not possible and there is no option to export as well, you need to work on the theme design in the website as well.
5. Most importantly, Wix has their own AI tool to generate content and optimize the SEO. As a result, you need to revamp your work completely as the AI-generated content will have no impact or help in Search Engine Ranking for the website.
Fortunately, we have few methods under our sleeves which will make the process simple if you follow the steps we share in the following article.
Pre-Process Before Transfer Wix to WordPress:
1. You need to register a domain name that you can use to connect with the hosting service.
2. After registering a domain, you will need hosting space to store your Wix posts or images, which can be obtained by purchasing a hosting service.
3. Once you purchase the domain and hosting, you need to confirm if the nameservers are updated in the domain.
3. Coming to the last step, you need to install WordPress so you can import the posts or images to the live content.
Hope you are prepared with pre-processing so it will be easier to follow the remaining process.
Migrate or Tranfer from Wix to WordPress:
Option 1: Using RSS Feed for Posts.
Step 1
Once you login to the Wix Dashboard, you can find your website URL on the top under the “Setup” page.
Step 2
Load the website and add “/blog-feed.xml” at the end of the website name. For example, if the website name is wix.seekahost.com, then load the website as wix.seekahost.com/blog-feed.xml.
Step 3
Now right-click on the mouse on that page and click the “Save as” option or use the shortcut “ctrl + S” on your Windows keyboard to store the RSS feed in XML format. You have finished your task in Wix and now we move on to WordPress.
Step 4
Login to the WordPress dashboard for the website using “/wp-admin” at the end of the website name with the WordPress login credentials. In case you have forgotten the password, you can reset the password in phpmyadmin.
Step 5
On the Dashboard, scroll down and click Tools -> Import -> Run Importer under the RSS option.
Step 6
Now upload the Blog Feed RSS file by clicking the “choose” button. Then, click the “Upload File and Import” button to successfully import all the posts.
Since all the images are still hosted with Wix, you need to save the images manually and upload in WordPress Media.
Step 7
To check all the posts uploaded have been imported successfully, you can click the Posts -> All Posts.
Option 2: Manual Migration for Pages and Images.
Step 1
Most of the pages in Wix don’t have many pages apart from Contact Us, blog, home, or services. Since the RSS feed method can only be able to migrate the posts, you need to copy-paste the content into WordPress manually.
It’s a simple process where you have to go to the Wix dashboard and click the “Edit Site” button.
Step 2
On the top left corner, click the drop-down icon and click “Manage Pages” to see the available pages. It will be easier for you to switch between pages and copy-paste the content as well.
Login to the WordPress -> Pages -> Add New Page
Once done, paste the copied content from Wix by right click on the mouse and clicking “Paste“. After pasting, add a title related to the content and click “Publish” to live the page. This completes the page migration if you have done the same for all other pages. Let’s move on to Images Migrate from Wix.
Step 3
Transfer Wix to WordPress using the RSS Feed method for posts will bring the content along with the images posted in the content. But unfortunately, the images will still be hosted and live from the Wix. So, in this case, you can download and install the plugin – Auto Upload Images.
Once you have installed and activated the domain, go to Posts -> All Posts. Then, click the check box near the left of the “Title” to select all posts and choose the “Edit” option from the drop-down.
Now click the “Apply” button.
Now click the “Update” button to apply for all pages. This will import all the images in the selected posts to your media library in WordPress.
NOTE: This Process will take a little longer and you need to delete the plugin once this process is done as it is outdated and the developer has stopped updating this plugin.
Option 3: Redirect Wix to WordPress
Unfortunately, if you were using a Wix subdomain site, then you cannot redirect users to your WordPress site. We recommend linking your new website to your old Wix site homepage to redirect users to WordPress.
Note: Only using the Custom Domain registered at Wix, you be able to work out this redirection.
Step 1
We have come to the final step of the Transfer Wix to WordPress process where redirecting your visitor from accessing old site to the new site will be the only one remaining.
Redirecting the traffic is one thing and it is important to not lose the users who have been long using your old address to visit the pages. This can be done more easily by creating a .js file and uploading to the website cPanel.
Login to cPanel and go to the mentioned path – /public_html/wp-admin/js. Here create a file name “redirect.js”, paste the below code by editing the file and saving it.
var hashesarr = {
“#!about/ghit7”:’/about-us/‘,
“#!contact-us/fe37”:’/contact/’
};
for (var hash in hashesarr) {
var patt = new RegExp(hash);
if (window.location.hash.match(patt) !== null) {
window.location.href = hashesarr[hash];
}
}
In this code, we have given two example URLs which you need to replace with your WordPress URL. The first part “#!about/ghit7″ needs to be updated with WIX old URL. The second part “/about-us/” needs to be updated with the WordPress URL where you want to redirect the WIX old URL.
You need to do the same for other pages created on Wix by updating the line again and replacing it.
Step 2
If you are using the default WordPress theme, the “Theme File Editor” option will not be available. So, you need to use a different free theme apart from the default theme.
Login to WordPress -> Appearance -> Theme File Editor
Go to Theme Functions and update the code at the bottom of the file.
function wpb_wixjs () {
wp_enqueue_script( ‘wixredirect’, get_stylesheet_directory_uri() .
‘/js/redirects.js’, array(), ‘1.0.0’, true);
}
add_action(‘wp_enqueue_scripts’, ‘wpb_wixjs’);
Click Update File and try visiting your old Wix URL. This should redirect your visitors to your new WordPress website.
Option 4: Through Plugin
You can find the plugin – CMS2CMS suggested for migrating from Wix to WordPress in a few articles but the plugin is outdated and has been removed from WordPress completely. Even if you download and install it in WordPress, it will not support the latest WordPress or PHP version and cause critical errors on the website.
After Transfer Wix to WordPress:
1. Install a fresh theme suitable for your website content and redesign your work.
2. There are a lot of plugins and themes available to add new styles and features in WordPress. So, install the plugin to add more dynamic structure to your website pages.
3. To keep the website secure and visitor data encrypted, you need to install SSL and configure force HTTPS redirection. Also further security concern, it will be always safe to install any security plugin for the website.
4. Since Wix content might have automated using AI tools for content SEO, you need to better install any SEO plugin for the website.
Short Summary:
Wix and WordPress are two different platforms that have two distinct features for two different users developing a website. So, plan your website growth and start building your website from the right platform.