How to Switch From Wix to WordPress

Do you want to switch your Wix website to WordPress? Wix is the website builder which allows you to customize your website using drag and drop tools. Because of the limited features and expensive upgrade many Wix user want to switch their blog to WordPress.

What is WordPress?

WordPress is the popular content management system (CMS) that allows you to customize your website without any limitation. You need a domain name and best WordPress hosting to start a professional blog. You can refer to this guide to learn more about WordPress.

Before you begin you must have custom domain name and WordPress hosting server. In this step by step guide you will learn how to switch from Wix website to WordPress.

Step-1: Get WordPress hosting and Install WordPress

Setting up your WordPress site needs domain name and best WordPress hosting that accelerate your WordPress blog. Domain name is the site address and web hosting make your blog live in the internet.

Wix is the site builder which allow you to drag and drop the element and add the content in your blog. It uses its own hosting server to host your blog, in other side WordPress is free self hosted blogging platform means you need to install WordPress in your own hosting server.

Bluehost makes it easy to install WordPress without hassle. Get the free domain name in purchases of bluehost plan. We recommend you to start a blog with Bluehost. It offers free domain name for first year and web hosting plan starting at $5.95 per month. You can get discount on Bluehost plan using the button below.

If you wish to host your WordPress blog with different hosting companies check these list of best website hosting companies officially recommended by WordPress.

If you have chosen Bluehost, click the button above and it will take you to the bluehost website where you have to click on Get Started button then choose the plan.

In the next page you will see the options to choose your domain name. If you already have the domain name enter your domain name in Use a domain you own box.

If you want to register a new domain name for free choose the domain from Create a new domain.

Complete the process of setting up a domain name and WordPress hosting. Once payment process finish it will ask you to complete few steps to install WordPress. Bluehost install your WordPress site automatically.

Step-2: Setup Permalinks

Permalinks play a important role in SEO. It is the URLs of the blog posts and pages. Choosing human readable permalinks will help your site to rank better in the search engine.

You need to login to your WordPress dashboard adding /wp-admin after the domain name e.g. www.yourblog.com/wp-admin in the web browser. Enter the username and password that you have created while signing up to bluehost.

Once login to WordPress dashboard. Click on Permalinks under Settings. You will see the options to choose the permalinks for the blog posts and pages. Click on post name then save changes.

Step-3: Import Wix Blog Post to WordPress

Wix is closed platform which mean they don’t provide easy features to move the Wix site to another platform. However you can migrate your Wix site to WordPress with automate process by importing Wix RSS feed.

Download Wix RSS Feed

Type your Wix domain name adding /blog-feed.xml in the browser. Examples are shown below.

www.mywpblog.com/blog-feed.xml
mywpblog.wixsite.com/sitename/blog-feed.xml

Note: Wix only allow old Wix site to download RSS feed. If you have newly create Wix blog then you need to migrate Wix blog using automate process using premium cms2cms plugin.

Adding /blog-feed.xml after your domain or sub-domain name you will see the RSS feed as shown below.

If you are using Google chrome then right click on the page and click on Save as and keep the file on the desktop.

Once saved, login to WordPress dashboard then click on Tools and Import. From the RSS click on install now. It will install RSS feed importer plugin to your website.

After installation, you will see Run Importer link. Click on Run Importer then click on Choose file button.

Select blog-feed.xml file from your computer to open and click on Upload file and import button.

Depending on the file size, it will take few minutes to complete the importing process.

Once completed you will see successful message that says All Done.

You can see the imported posts by going to All post under Posts.

Import Images

Now, your post are imported successfully but still the images in the post need to be imported which you can do using the auto upload image plugin. You can see this guide on how to install WordPress plugins.

Install and activate auto upload image plugin. The default settings of this plugin will work for the beginners.

If you want to make changes in the plugin settings you can go to settings then auto upload images and alter the setting.

After activation of plugin you need to go to Posts then All posts. From the left side click on Screen Options, where you can increase the number of post you want to list in one page. You can make upto 999 post in one page.

Under pagination, increase the number of page you want to list in one page e.g. 999 then click on apply button.

Now, select all the post clicking on the box before the Title then from the drop down select edit and click on apply.

You will see the edit options, click on Update button without changing anything.

Step-4: Import Wix Blog Page to WordPress

You have finished importing the Wix Posts, now you need to import Wix pages to the WordPress site.

Since Wix doesn’t provide the way to import the pages you need to rebuild the pages and copy the content one by one from your Wix blog.

Open your Wix site and navigate to the pages you want to import. Select the content then right click on the selection and click on copy.

Open your WordPress dashboard. Click on Pages then Add New. Add the title then right click on the paragraph block and click on paste. Once you finish designing the content, click on publish button.

You can check this guide on how to add post or pages in WordPress.

Step-5: Create Navigation Menu in WordPress

Navigation menu makes your visitor to find the content easily.

Click on appearance then menus.

Type the menu name and click on Save menu button.

Expand Custom links then type the menu name e.g. Home in Link Text box. In URL field type the link of your pages you want to link to. Click on Add to Menu button.

You can also add the pages and categories to the menu. Check this guide on how to add navigation menu in WordPress.

We hope this guide on how to switch from Wix to WordPress is helpful. You may also like to take a look on WordPress resources for the beginner. If you find this guide helpful, please share and follow us on facebook and twitter.