- How to Migrate from Wix to WordPress
- Sign-up for a WordPress Domain Name and Web Hosting
- Install WordPress on Your Web Hosting Account
- Customize Your WordPress Design With the Best Theme
- Import Your Content From Wix to Your WordPress Site
- Import Wix Pages and Images to WordPress
- Redirect From Wix to WordPress
- Conclusion
Have a Wix website and are thinking of moving to WordPress because you’ve learned you can have more options with the latter? Or you’ve Been using Wix for your website but want to move to WordPress?.
Wix is a simple drag and drop builder that allows you to create a website quickly and easily. However, it is limited in terms of features and you need to pay a hefty amount of money to add more options to your site.
That’s why many users want to transfer their website from Wix to another platform which is more flexible in terms of customization and offers better feature options. This is where WordPress comes in.
WordPress is a popular self-hosted content management system that is loaded with amazing features. In this article, we’ll show you how to switch from Wix to WordPress.
Before focusing on how to transfer your content from Wix to WordPress, it makes sense to learn how to make a solid WordPress website to move all of your content to.
Your first step is to purchase web hosting. Whatever host you choose will depend on your needs. Wix is a hosted platform that takes care of everything including hosting. Moving to WordPress means setting up your domain and hosting. Sounds hard? It’s, very easy. Migrating to WordPress means you have more control over your website and there are a lot of WordPress tools available to help you with that task.
You have to set up a temporary domain for your WordPress site because Wix won’t instantly let you use your original domain.We need to request the transfer of your domain name from Wix to WordPress if you want to use the same domain name you are using with Wix. I will discuss this procedure later in this article.
Purchasing a Domain Name
Many web hosting companies provide domain registration for free and even provide a temporary domain you can use. Having a domain name can cost you around $10 to $20 a year.
The following are the sites where you can purchase your domain name:
- GoDaddy
- NameCheap
- NameSilo
- SnapNames
- Hostwinds
- Sedo
- Flippa
- FatCow
- HostGator
- Google Domains
You also need to purchase a web hosting package that will store all the files, images, and everything you put on your WordPress website.
There many companies offering web hosting services, and below are the top web hosts on my list:
- SiteGround
- InMotion
- BlueHost
- HostGator
After you purchase your web host and temporary domain, the next step is to initiate your domain name transfer from Wix to WordPress. This can take some time so plan accordingly.
If you purchase the domain from Wix, sign-in to your Wix account, turn-off Auto-renewal, and private domain registration.
Then go to my Domains link, click Domain, go to Advanced tab, click Transfer away from Wix and send the code to your email address.
Wait for the completion of the transfer of the domain name. According to ICANN rules, you need to own the domain name for at least 60 days for you to be able to transfer your domain name away from Wix.
The transfer process will take at least seven days. Once you get the transfer code, you need to provide that to your new hosting provider to prove that you are the domain name owner.
Once the transfer is complete, WordPress can be set to use the domain name instead of the temporary one we used earlier.
While waiting for your domain name to be transferred from Wix to WordPress, you can use your temporary domain name to set up your new WordPress website.
Your hosting provider will provide you your login credentials. The next thing you need to do is log in to your account, look for and click WordPress >> Install WordPress, fill-in the required fields, and click Install WordPress.
You could choose to customize your WordPress site’s design using a theme or leave it for now. I recommend you choose a basic free theme for your site.
Once your WordPress is installed on your web host, you will be given your login credentials for WordPress.
You will notice that there are pre-installed plugins that come with WordPress. We can choose which plugins we want or need and delete those we don’t want to use.
You also have to delete two files that interfere with your stuff. Go to File Manager, choose default.html and favicon.ico, Right-click, and then delete the files. Some web hosts may not have these files, you should look for them once you start with your WordPress site.
Now, login to your new WordPress site using the login credentials provided to you. Your WordPress site is active, but you still have to do some customization to make sure your site is ready for migration.
Earlier, I said it’s best to use themes to customize your WordPress site, depending on the type of website you want to build.
We recommend choosing a page builder you want to use for your web page.
Page builders are plugins with drag and drop functionality that allows you to build your website without having to learn code.
If you’re interested in learning more about Page Builders. WordPress also has its page builder – Gutenberg.
With all of these fantastic page builders, you should pair them with the best WordPress theme that offers fast, lightweight, and comes with a wide range of starter templates.
K2 Blocks is one of the best and highly recommended WordPress plugin that works seamlessly with Gutenberg page builder. It can enhance your website look and feel in a matter of seconds.
To set up your WordPress site login into your WordPress Dashboard, click on Appearance >> Themes >> Add New.
Fig (a) Choose the Theme You want to use for your website.
Click the Install & Preview button, and the Astra themes will be installed in less than a minute.
Click on Activate >> Get Started.
You can do this in two ways – Manual migration and automated.
To migrate manually, you need to create a page on your WordPress site, copy your content from Wix and paste it to your WordPress page.
I recommend you copy your content directly from your Wix site’s published posts and not from the back end. This will display your content in its final form rather than unformatted text content which may distort parts of the content once posted to your WordPress site.
That’s easy if you only have a few posts on your Wix site that you want to transfer to WordPress. But if you have been using Wix for a long time and you have much more content that needs to be migrated to WordPress, doing it manually is very time-consuming.
But don’t worry, you can automate parts of the migration process using some WordPress plugins.
First, you need to get your Wix RSS feed. In your Wix site, click the ADD or “+” button, go to
Blog, look for the RSS button and drag it anywhere on your page.
Click the RSS button and your RSS Feed will appear in XML format. Right-click on the file and then click Save.
Fig (b) Save the Rss File in XML form.
Once saved, go to your WordPress admin area, click on Tools >> Import. Look for RSS and click Install Now.
Fig (c) Import in WordPress
Once installed, click on Run Importer >> Browse, then choose the file you saved earlier.
Fig (d) Run Importer in WordPress
Migrating through the RSS feed is suitable for posts but not for pages; Wix won’t allow you to export pages and templates in this way.
For images, you can use the Import External Images plugin.
You can also use All Import any XML. Just install it from your WordPress dashboard under Plugins. Once installed, open the plugin, click Upload a file, select the XML file you saved.
Click Continue to Step 2, check if all of your blog posts are copied.
Click on Continue to Step 3, and a template will appear. Click on Text, then drag and drop the items corresponding to the required fields like title, content, excerpt, or description.
In the Images section, choose the option on Scan through the post content and import the images wrapped in <img> tags – this will download your Wix images to WordPress, turn it into a self-hosted blog post and remove references to your Wix images.
Continue to fill-up the remaining fields depending on your needs. Once satisfied, click on Continue to Step 4 >> Continue >> Confirm and Run Imports. Wait for 3-4 minutes to complete the import, and your blog posts are now ready, including your images.
In your WordPress dashboard click Settings,>> Permalinks, select Custom Structure, and enter your desired URL. Then click Save.
Fig (e) Go to Setting and then Premalink.
You can use the Broken Link Checker plugin to check for the links you may have missed during the migration.
At this point, I would like to say congratulations on your journey! You have successfully migrated your Wix site to a WordPress site. Feel free to ask any questions.
K2 blocks is a WordPress plugin developed by Pookidevs. You can contact us for custom plugin development at our Official site.