Wix and WordPress are both great options for building your own personal website. However, WordPress is known to have more features available and many Wix users have decided to switch platforms in order to customize their website deeper. With more options, such as Divi Builder and YoastSEO, at a low cost, WordPress is an attractive option for users. It’s such an appealing platform, WordPress makes up 32% of all websites.
Switching platforms may seem daunting, but depending on the method you use, it can easily be done without taking up a large chunk of your day. Below, we’ve highlighted the steps you need to take to make the transition from Wix to WordPress as seamless as possible.
Steps You Need to Take
1. Sign up for WordPress Hosting
You will need to host a new website when you remove yourself from Wix and either transfer or purchase a new domain name. Some hosting providers are HostGator and SiteGround.
- It is interesting to note that there is WordPress.com and WordPress.org. With WordPress.org, you host your own site while WordPress.com allows for you to use their own hosting services.
2. Setup Your New WordPress Site
Install and setup WordPress and change any settings such as how your permalinks look. You can also take this time to customize your site with dozens of themes at your disposal. You may want to use the default for now and return once you are finished transferring your information.
3. Grabbing Wix’s RSS File
Instead of transferring each blog post manually, there is a way to use your Wix’s RSS feed. Download your Wix’s RSS feed by adding /feed.xml or /blog-feed.xml to the end of your website URL. When you are brought to a page of code, right-click anywhere and save it.
4. Moving Blog Posts to WordPress
Once you have the file, return to WordPress and go to tools->import. Once there, click install now under the RSS heading. Click the run importer link that appears and pick choose file and select your feed.xml file. Click the upload and import file option and wait as it may take a few minutes. Your content is now uploaded.
5. Importing Wix Pages
There is no automated way to do this, so the best way is to manually copy and paste the information. Copy it and go to WordPress and click pages-> add new and recreate the page. To recreate a contacts page you should seek out a plugin that will allow you to do so such as WPForms.
6. Redirect Your Site
If your site was NOT built on a subdomain you can implement a little bit of code to redirect your visitor to your new site. Open up a notepad on your device and paste this code block adding in what is needed.
For example, “#!about-us/c1it7”:’/about/’,. The first part will be the about us link for your Wix site and the second ‘/about/’, will be your WordPress URL. It is the same process for the two code lines under it.
-
-
- var hashesarr = {
- “#!about-us/c1it7”:’/about/’,
- “#!contact/ce54”:’/contact/’,
- “#!random-article/c1mz”:’/random-article/’
- };
- for (var hash in hashesarr) {
- var patt = new RegExp(hash);
- if (window.location.hash.match(patt) !== null) {
- location.href = hashesarr[hash];
- }
- }
-
Save this file as redirects.js. and upload it to your WordPress theme’s /js/ directory using an FTP client. Now, you can edit your theme’s functions.php file and add the following block of code to the bottom and save your changes.
-
-
- 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’);
-
That should be all and you should have a redirection available. Remember to remind your clients of this big change as well.
How Websults Can Help
Websults is a Tampa based business and is dedicated to maintaining your site to ensure that it is the best that it can be. We have over 10 years of experience in tailoring how your site shows up in rankings and are prepared to work with you to make sure your site hits the right keywords. We offer website hosting among many other services that you can find here. When running a business, it’s great to have other people take care of what might take hours away from work you could be doing growing your venture. If you have any questions or would like to ask for more information, feel free to contact us at (727) 597-7300.
