Wix platform provides the service of creating websites and blogs easily and without the need to use code, so it attracts many people who want to get a website quickly and in record time. However, over time, some website owners may discover that this platform does not fully meet their needs. It does not provide them with additional options, so they are considering porting it to the WordPress platform. This process is usually called website migration.
One of the reasons for considering moving the site from Wix to WordPress is that as time passes and the site spreads and receives a large number of visitors, the site owner may need to install one of the plugins that helps him manage visitor data, or launch email marketing campaigns.
He may also need to customize SEO plugins to prepare the content in a better way that is more compatible with search engines, or to access the HTML source code of the site, which is something that cannot be obtained in Wix for free in some cases.
Read also: Wix or WordPress? Which is best for you? Comprehensive comparison
In this article, we provide you with a complete guide that shows you the process of transferring a website from Wix to WordPress, step by step. We will discuss more than one method used to complete the transfer process, and you can rely on any of these methods depending on the size and amount of data your site contains.
How to migrate from Wix to WordPress
The Wix platform is a completely different platform from the WordPress platform, and perhaps the most notable difference between them is that Wix is a closed source website builder while WordPress is an open source content management system, which makes moving between the two platforms not as straightforward as moving a WordPress site from one hosting to another .
But do not worry, there are many methods available to carry out the transfer process, and we have been keen to explain to you the easiest and simplest ones within this article.
In order to clarify the general idea of the site transfer process, we can summarize the transfer process in the following steps:
- Preparing a new hosting to install WordPress on.
- Get an RSS feed from the Wix website that contains all articles.
- Get one of the WordPress plugins that helps transfer images from Wix to WordPress.
- Transfer pages from Wix to WordPress.
- Create a main navigation menu in WordPress.
- WordPress home page design.
We will talk about these steps in more detail and with a practical explanation in the rest of the article.
1- Preparing a new hosting to install WordPress on
The first step before starting the site transfer procedures is to obtain private hosting from one of the famous hosting companies , as well as purchasing the private domain for the new WordPress site. You may not need to purchase the domain if you intend to use the same current private domain that you purchased for the Wix site.
After you prepare the hosting and domain well, the next step begins, which is installing WordPress on the hosting. You cannot complete the transfer process unless you install WordPress first, because you will need to install some add-ons later to help you complete the transfer process completely.
After completing the installation process, you must install a WordPress template suitable for the look and feel of the new site that you want.
2- Get the RSS feed from the Wix website
If your Wix site contains a blog for articles published on the site, you will have to obtain those articles and move them to WordPress, and the easiest way to do this is by obtaining the Wix site’s RSS feed and then transferring them and uploading them to the new WordPress site.
You can get the RSS feed file of your Wix website by adding feed.xml or blog-feed.xml to your Wix website URL. If you do not have a custom domain on Wix, then you can access the file through the following link:
Username.Wixsite.com/YourBlog/blog-feed.xml
Paying attention to the necessity of replacing the Username in the previous link with your username on Wix, as well as wix.com with the domain name of your site on Wix hosting, and you must also replace YourBlog with the name of the blog for your site.
If you have a private domain, then you can access the summary file through the following link:
www.YourWixBlog.com/blog-feed.xml
By replacing the YourWixBlog.com domain with your website’s domain.
After entering the RSS feed link, a page will open in front of you containing a summary of the articles on the site. Click the right mouse button anywhere inside it and a list of options will appear before you, from which choose the “ Save As ” command:
Then save the page as feed.xml anywhere on your computer.
After creating your WordPress site , now go to the control panel of your new WordPress site , then go to Tools > Import
A page will open in front of you containing a tool called RSS, next to which a button ( Install Now ) will appear. Click on it as shown in the following image:
After clicking on the Install RSS Feed Import Tool button, go back to: Tools > Import to find that the RSS Tool now has a ( Run Importer ) button next to it instead of the ( Install Now ) button.
After clicking on the “Run Importer” button, a page will open in front of you that allows you to upload the RSS feed file that you saved in the previous step on your computer with the name Feed.xml:
After selecting the file from the computer, click on the ( Upload and Import File ) button to successfully upload the file and import all articles from Wix into WordPress.
The following image shows the (Articles) tab in the WordPress control panel before uploading the RSS feed file. As you can notice, there is only the default article that comes with the WordPress installation titled “ Hello World !”
The following image shows the (Articles) tab in the WordPress control panel after uploading the RSS feed file in the manner we explained in the previous steps. As you can see, all articles were retrieved from the Wix website and imported into the WordPress control panel, through which you can modify them using the WordPress editor tools .
Note: If the RSS feed import tool does not work well on your WordPress site, in this case you can install the WP Rss Import plugin from the WordPress store, which, once installed, will open a box for downloading the xml file for the article feed so that you can upload it to the site, and then Complete the rest of the steps that we explained in the previous paragraphs.
Read also: Explaining RSS and how to use it for your WordPress site
3 – Transfer images from Wix to WordPress
After you complete the step of uploading the RSS feed file, as we mentioned previously, you will notice that all articles from the Wix website will appear within the WordPress control panel, but unfortunately you will not find the attached images inside the articles (if the articles in Wix contain images in the first place).
Therefore, in the next step, we will solve this problem so that all articles appear correctly with the images attached inside them.
First, you need to install a WordPress plugin that will retrieve images for articles that you have retrieved from the Rss file. We will use the Auto upload images plugin .
After installing and activating the plugin on the site, go directly to the WordPress control panel > Articles . Then update all the articles on the site so that the extension automatically fetches the image included within it and hosted on the Wix website.
To update, select all articles on the site, then select the ( Edit) option from the drop-down menu above the articles, then click the Apply button as shown in the following image:
After that, the quick editing window for all site articles will open for you, and you will find at the bottom left of this window a button (Update). Click on this button so that all previously published articles are updated.
After that, you will find that all images attached to articles on Wix now appear inside articles published in WordPress.
4. Transfer pages from wix to wordpress
In the previous paragraphs, we explained the process of transferring articles from Wix to WordPress. It was a very easy process, as we relied on some easy-to-use plugins that enabled us to do it without much effort.
But with regard to transferring pages from Wix to WordPress, the free method available to us will be the manual method, so in this paragraph we will explain to you the steps to transfer pages manually.
Note : Regarding large and massive sites that contain a large number of pages, there is a way to carry out the transfer process more quickly and efficiently, which we will refer to in the following paragraphs.
To transfer a Wix page to WordPress, you must enter the page you want to transfer, then copy the title and content from it, then enter the WordPress Control Panel > Pages > Add New
A blank page will open in front of you. Paste the title and content of the Wix page here, then add the images and media files attached to it:
You must repeat this process on all the pages that we want to transfer from Wix to WordPress until all pages are transferred from the old site to the new one.
Moving pages in large and huge sites
As you can see, the previous method in which we explained the process of manually transferring Wix website pages to a WordPress website will of course not be practical if the site is large and contains a very large number of pages.
So there is a WordPress plugin dedicated to large and massive websites called CMS2CMS . This add-on enables you to move not only from Wix, but from any content management system on the web to the WordPress system. This add-on provides many options that help you complete the process of transferring the entire site with content in a few minutes and with almost no effort.
The CMS2CMS add-on provides multiple options for transferring Wix sites to WordPress easily and without your intervention, but unfortunately it is not free, and once the add-on is installed on your site, you will be asked to register an account on the official website of the add-on and subscribe to their paid plans to get the features and options of transferring sites from Wix to WordPress. .
After creating an account on the official website of the plugin and installing and activating it, you will log in to the WordPress control panel and find the plugin’s tab within the control panel:
As the previous image shows you, once you enter the add-on tab within WordPress, you will find a login page. You must enter the login data for your account that you previously created in it, and begin putting the data for the old and new site, and the add-on will begin its work without your intervention and will complete the process of transferring the articles. Pages, categories, images, and all other components.
6 – Create the main navigation menu in WordPress
After you moved all the articles, images, and pages from the old site to the new site, now everything is almost ready and your new site contains all the components that were present in your old Wix site.
The final step in the transfer process is to create the main navigation menus for the site, which include links to the pages, articles, and sections that interest your site visitors.
Go to WordPress Dashboard > Lists . From here you can create a new list and give it the appropriate name, such as (Main Menu) :
Then click on the (Create List) button to create a blank navigation menu to which you can add many elements, such as pages, articles, categories, custom links, etc.
Make sure to add pages and links that are of great interest to your visitors, and help them navigate to important pages and links easily.
7- Procedures after completing the transfer
The stage of developing the site and improving its performance does not end with the process of transferring to WordPress only, but there are many procedures that you can take in order to develop and improve the performance of the site to the best possible result, and in the following paragraphs we will review for you the most important procedures that can help you manage the new WordPress site. In a way that helps develop it and provide a distinctive user experience for visitors.
Paying attention to SEO
As long as you decide to rely on WordPress to manage the content of your website, you have many opportunities that, if you exploit them in the right way, there will be a great opportunity for your site to rank at the top of the search results on the various search engines, and your site will receive more visitors in an ongoing manner without making any additional effort. .
Improve your site’s content to be suitable for search engines that constantly read and analyze it in order to show it to those searching for content similar to your site’s content.
Also, install one of the SEO plugins that helps you prepare the entire content of the site for search engines and increase the chance of it appearing in front of many visitors coming from different search engines.
You can check out our WordPress SEO guide for more information about making your WordPress site search engine friendly.
Follow the statistics
Knowing statistics about visitors to your website is the beginning of providing more appropriate content to them and thus improving the user experience within the site.
You can activate Google Analytics on your WordPress site to obtain a lot of important data and statistics about users (the types of devices that visitors use, the countries from which visits to the site come most, the times when visitors are most crowded within the site, and the search terms that led visitors to enter your site ..) and other data and statistics that are greatly useful in preparing a successful content plan for your site visitors.
On the WordPress Arabic website, you will find a comprehensive guide on using Google Analytics to improve site performance and provide the best user experience.
Backup
When your website is subjected to sabotage attacks or a serious technical malfunction, it may cause the site to be destroyed and perhaps a lot of its data lost. Therefore, in this case, it will be very important to have a backup copy of the site before the sabotage or malfunction occurs, and in this way it can be retrieved again and the site returned to its original state before Malfunction occurs.
There are many ways you can set up backups of your site to secure it from any unexpected damage.
You will find at the following link a complete explanation of the steps for creating backup copies of a WordPress site , which helps you create a backup system for the site to protect it from data loss or destruction.
Conclusion
In today’s article, we explained the steps to migrate your website from the Wix platform to the WordPress platform, which gives you many unlimited and renewable options and allows you to manage, develop, and improve your site’s performance. The WordPress platform is considered one of the most powerful open source platforms in which thousands of developers around the world participate in its development.
Perhaps one of the most important things available in this system are WordPress plugins , as plugins provide you with solutions to almost any problem you face within your site, so being aware of new WordPress plugins will greatly help you manage the site in a more efficient manner.
In conclusion, we point out that you should be careful when transferring your site’s content from Wix to WordPress and avoid any data loss during the transfer process by following the practical steps that we explained throughout the article.
