WordPress is the best website design tool ever developed, and you shouldn't even consider using anything else to build your website, right?
I disagree.
WordPress has a lot going for it as a blogging engine. However, making it look like something that wasn't hacked, bent out of shape and frenetically created by the web designer with no soul needs varying degrees of coding expertise.
The CSS (cascading style sheet) knowledge required to wake a WordPress template up from its coma on life support and transform it into a design awards contender is prodigious.
Similarly, making something that will adequately represent your business without leading to mouse-pointing guffaws behoves a dash of brio that you'll be hard pushed to find from all those vanilla design crowd vulgarities.
WordPress is the most popular website design platform, but that doesn't mean you should follow the herd into website design purgatory.
Sure, you will need some design chops to make the most of the Wix platform but dragging and dropping your elements to the page is a lot easier than searching through lines of code for the correct attributes to apply.
Why You Might Want To Migrate Your WordPress Site To Wix
I won't try and convince you of WordPress's shortcomings as a website design tool but, instead, I'll point those of you who are sitting on the fence and wavering in the wind to my Wix website review, which should dispel any reservations you may have had about jumping ship.
The main reason you would use WordPress over Wix is as a blogging tool where it is inarguably a better website platform for the job. But after working with Wix for a while, you realise that a superior website development platform heavily outweighs the WordPress advantages.
So, for those who just want to get into the migration and leave all those unworkable plugins behind here is my guide to migrating from WordPress to Wix.
You might like to read my guide to eCommerce project management before you start to know what you are getting into and make an action plan using the right tools.
The Steps Involved To Migrate A WordPress Website To Wix
Step One: Create a free Wix account
The first step is to create a Wix account. You can do this by going to the Wix website and clicking on the "Sign Up" button. You will then be asked to enter your email address, choose a password and select a username. Once you have done this, you can log in to your free account.
Step Two: Create a free site on the Wix platform.
You don't need to pay for a new site to test how the conversion process will work so that you can migrate at your leisure. Most of the work must be done manually, and unfortunately, there isn't a one-click automatic migration tool available.
Your migration work can be viewed on an external Wix URL, so there is no requirement to connect a domain to do the migration work at this point.
Step Three: Choose a Template
Once you have logged in to your account, you can choose a template for your site. Wix has a wide range of templates available, so you should be able to find one that suits your needs.
To choose a template, click on the "Templates" tab at the top of the page and browse the available options. When you find a template you like, click on the "Use This Template" button.
Step Four: Recreate Your menu and page structure
Once you've chosen the template you want to use, the Wix editor will automatically load:
Top Tip: Once you've chosen a template to work with, you can't change it. However, a great workaround is to save your menu design and other custom work to "my designs", where you can reuse it on another site template.
This way, you can start another site using a different template and then drag and drop the menu design you've already created so that you don't have to repeat all the work.
The first design task is to recreate your site pages (About us and site content pages).
When creating your new pages transfer the old page titles, page URL and meta description from WordPress to your new page like this:
This way, you won't lose all your "on-page" SEO work.
Next, create your menu and point the menu items to the new pages you have made. Then you have to work copying and pasting all your text from the old site to the new and adding your images.
Step Five: Import blog content from WordPress
Wix will import up to 4,000 blogs from your Wordpress site automatically.
You can rename all the blog URLs to match your old WordPress ones so that you don't lose any search engine rankings, and you have access to an easy-to-use 301 redirect manager if required.
Step Six: Check Your Work
Give your handiwork a good review by inspecting it on the external Wix URL. You can share this URL so that others can view it. Once you are satisfied that everything is in place, you can connect your domain to the new Wix website and choose a suitable paid-for plan.
Step Seven: Publish!
If you got this far, congratulations! I'm sure you will have a great Wix experience! If you need help migrating your current WordPress website to Wix, contact us, and we will be happy to do the job for you.
Although Wix automates the import of your blog posts, everything else must be done by hand, and recreating everything, so you don't lose search engine traffic, is no mean feat.
