Building your first website with Weebly might have seemed easy at first, but now you find yourself running into functional limitations and problems. WordPress has caught your eye and you’re wondering if it might be the solution you’re looking for.
WordPress offers significant advantages over Weebly, making it an excellent choice for websites of all shapes and sizes:
Once you decide WordPress is the perfect solution for you and your website, you’re probably wondering if you can manage the migration from Weebly to WordPress. You can and this article will provide everything you need for a successful transition.
Understanding your domain setup is the first step in the WordPress migration process. If you’re already using a custom domain (like yourbusiness.com) with Weebly or another registrar, you’re all set for migration. However, if you’re using a free Weebly subdomain (such as yourbusiness.weebly.com), you’ll need to purchase a domain from a registrar like Porkbun or Namecheap before moving forward.
Please note: You shouldn’t migrate your domain just yet. That’s covered after the WordPress migration to keep your downtime to a minimum. We’ve provided this as a first step because there are certain concepts you need to grasp before you start the process and understanding them will facilitate a seamless transition.
To get started, you’ll need to locate your domain and hosting information. You can find your domain settings in your registrar’s account dashboard. Your host typically provides your hosting control panel login details.
As you prepare for migration, familiarize yourself with these domain-related terms:
Choosing a host that specializes in WordPress can significantly enhance your website’s performance and security. These providers offer server configurations optimized for WordPress which will provide faster load times and better overall performance.
Managed WordPress hosting, offered by providers like Pressable, takes this specialization a step further. These services typically include automatic WordPress updates, daily backups, advanced caching systems, malware protection, and expert WordPress support. This approach allows you to focus on your content and business goals rather than technical maintenance.
When choosing a WordPress host, look for one that allows you to set up and test your entire WordPress site before updating DNS. This is crucial for a smooth migration with minimal downtime.
If you’re new to the world of WordPress hosting, we’ve written two guides that will help catch you up to speed:
Your WordPress theme determines your site’s aesthetic, while plugins add specific functionalities. When selecting a theme, look for one that suits your design style, is user friendly, and has solid support. Kadence, Astra, OceanWP, and Divi are all popular themes you could consider.
As far as plugins, you should start by looking into the basics, including and SEO plugin like Yoast and a contact form plugin like Gravity Forms. If you’re using a managed hosting provider like Pressable, you may not need separate backup or caching plugins, as these features are often included in the service.
Need a crash course on WordPress themes and plugins? We’ve written some articles we’re sure you’ll find useful:
When you’re ready to install, navigate to your WordPress dashboard, select Appearance > Themes or Plugins > Add New, and follow the prompts to install and activate your choices.
Keep in mind you will want to make sure important plugins (like WooCommerce) are installed prior to migrating your content from Weebly.
A complete backup of your Weebly site is your insurance policy during migration. This step preserves your content, design elements, and critical site data. There are two ways to create a backup of your Weebly site:
Creating a duplicate of your Weebly site provides an easy recovery option if needed and allows you to test changes without affecting your live site. However, keep in mind that this duplicate remains within the Weebly platform, so it won’t directly transfer to WordPress.
To create a duplicate of your existing Weebly site:
Weebly will create an exact copy of your site, including all pages, content, and design elements, accessible from the dashboard. You can use this copy to experiment or as a reference during the migration process, ensuring you have a fallback if needed.
While duplicating your site within Weebly is useful, exporting an archive provides a more portable backup solution. This method creates a downloadable file containing your site’s content and structure, which can be stored locally or in cloud storage.
Here’s how to export your Weebly website:
With your Weebly site backed up, it’s time to transfer your content to WordPress. There are three main approaches to this process.
Your Weebly site’s RSS feed offers a straightforward way to import your content into WordPress. This method is particularly useful for transferring blog posts and other regularly updated content.
Here’s how to use this approach:
When it’s finished, you’ll get a message saying Add done. Have fun! Click on the link, and it’ll take you to your homepage, where your content should have been migrated successfully, with the original publishing date, formatting, etc., intact. Check your content against the original pages to verify that everything was transferred correctly.
Manual migration offers the highest level of control and customization over your content transfer. This method allows you to fine-tune each page or post as you move it, meaning it fits perfectly within your new WordPress structure.
This approach is ideal for small websites with limited content. However, it can be time-consuming for larger sites or eCommerce platforms.
To manually migrate your Weebly content to WordPress:
For eCommerce sites, the next step provides a walkthrough for importing your products manually.
If you’re dealing with a substantial volume of posts or pages you can speed the process up slightly with tools like the Mass Pages/Posts Creator plugin. It can streamline things by creating multiple pages at once, with prefixes and postfixes, content, excerpts, and more applied in bulk.
However, remember that these tools only create mostly empty pages, so you’ll still need to populate them with content manually.
For a more streamlined solution, consider the Weebly to WordPress importer.
This tool brings over a lot more content than the RSS import method, including comments and categories.
To use it, follow these steps:
Validate your imported content against the original Weebly content to ensure everything moved over as intended.
If you’re operating an eCommerce store on Weebly, you’ll be glad to know you can import everything into WooCommerce.
Just follow these steps to get your WordPress store populated:
You can view your online store by going to yoursite.com/shop/. Remember to click through the store and related pages to make sure content transferred as expected.
With your content successfully migrated, it’s time to think about updating your URL structure. You can set URLs to match the format used in your Weebly website or you can create a new structure.
If you decide to create a new URL structure, you’ll want to make sure you update links that were imported and create 301 redirects to preserve your SEO.
Follow these steps to modify the default permalink structure in WordPress:
Test the permalinks by visiting post or page addresses with the new structure to see if they work. Use tools like Broken Link Checker or crawl the website with Screaming Frog to validate your URLs at scale. You’ll also want to keep a close eye on Google Search Console to monitor any 404s reported by Google.
If you keep receiving unexpected 404 errors, you might need to set unique bases in the Optional section of your permalink settings. For example, if you can’t browse by category from the live site, assign a value in the Category base area so your URLs show up as yoursite.com/category_base/category_name.
Now you are ready to redirect your old Weebly website to your new WordPress website.
To do this, follow these steps:
<meta http-equiv=”refresh” content=”0;url=http://www.yourwordpressdomain.com/”>The steps above only allow you to redirect visitors to your new homepage. For specific posts, you’ll need to do individual 301 redirects, which keep your visitors and search engine crawlers from hitting dead ends. Unfortunately, this option is only available if you had your own domain before and after migration.
The first method involves using a plugin like Redirection, which is as straightforward as it gets. Once you install the Redirection plugin into your WordPress install, you can quickly add your original and new URLs to the relevant fields and save them to the WordPress database. Redirection also allows you to import a redirect file so you can create 301 redirects in mass.
The second option is manual, requiring you to add the following code to your site’s .htaccess file for each URL you want to redirect:
RewriteEngine On
Redirect 301 /the_old_url/ http://yoursite.com/the_new_url/After making these changes, your Weebly site should automatically redirect to the new WordPress domain whenever someone visits it. With the permalinks set to match, search engine crawlers and your users won’t lose you.
Before launching your migrated website, you need to run thorough tests to identify and resolve issues, ensuring a smooth transition for your visitors.
Here is a checklist of things to consider and review:
Crawling the website with a SaaS product like SEMrush or Ahrefs will offer added protection. These tools will be able to identify issues you don’t visibly see, which will help protect the user experience and your SEO.
Wrap up the migration by ensuring Google Analytics (GA) and Google Tag Manager (GTM) are properly set up if you used them on your Weebly site. WordPress makes working with these easy via plugins like Google Site Kit and Google Tag Manager for WordPress. Use the Google Tag Assistant extension for Google Chrome to verify that your tags are firing correctly.
Migrating from Weebly to WordPress opens up a world of possibilities for your website. WordPress offers unparalleled flexibility and scalability, whether you’re running a blog, business site, or eCommerce store. Its vast ecosystem of themes and plugins allows for endless customization and functionality.
The right hosting partner plays a pivotal role in a successful transition, and at Pressable, we deliver exceptional value with:
Unlock your site’s full potential. Explore Pressable’s pricing plans and start your WordPress journey today!
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