Weebly is one of the many website builders that people can look at when they are considering publishing their website. Why? Provides a free plan. However, what happens when you get past a basic setup and don’t want to upgrade your weebly plans? In that case, one of the best options for you would be to migrate from Weebly to WordPress.
In this step-by-step guide, we’ll walk you through what you need to do to successfully migrate your existing Weebly website to a new WordPress website.
Before we go through the actual migration steps, let’s take a look at a few things that need to be in place to make the process as smooth and easy as possible. From getting a domain name and hosting to setting up WordPress for the migration process, we’ve got you covered.
From Weebly to WordPress: Migration Prerequisites
We know you’re eager and ready to move your site from Weebly to WordPress. Before this can happen, we go over a few things that you should have already taken care of before starting the actual website migration process.
Switching from one CMS to another is not always easy. This is especially true with Weebly and WordPress. While we are laying out the steps for you, certain things need to be considered beforehand.
Perhaps the most important thing to remember is the main difference between Weebly and WordPress.
Acquired by Square in 2018, Weebly is not an open source system. It is a proprietary drag and drop website builder that gives people everything they need to start building a site right away and get it online.
While this is all well and good, often people tend to outgrow a Weebly setup because they want more freedom and control over what they can and can’t do on their websites.
WordPress is designed for exactly this. WordPress is an open source system that offers users endless options when it comes to control and flexibility.
With WordPress, users can customize (almost) anything, including the underlying source code, themes, and functionality (via plugins) which allows for a great deal of freedom.
Now that we’ve highlighted the main differences between the two platforms, let’s take a look at the specific actions you’d need to take to ensure your migration from Weebly to a new WordPress website goes smoothly.
Register a domain name
If you’re moving from a platform like Weebly to WordPress, you’ll likely need to sign up and purchase a domain name. Since Weebly has a free plan, users who create websites there have a URL that looks something like this:
mysite.weebly.com
Now, this is not always the case. So if you already have your domain name, feel free to skip to the next section.
There are several good domain registrars to choose from. You want to consider things like prices and the top-level domain names (TLDs) that are available.
Purchasing a domain name is the first step in migrating your site from Weebly to WordPress. Our in-depth guide covering how to select the best domain name registrar can give you a more detailed look at this process.
Buy Hosting
Now that you have a domain name ready to roll, it’s time to buy hosting so you can get your new WordPress site up and running properly. Again, you must have your WordPress site up and running with a fresh WordPress installation on your domain name for you to successfully migrate.
There are different types of accommodation available. However, we suggest managed WordPress hosting for several reasons.
Our Phluit hosting platform is a great option and gives you access to all the WordPress hosting features and tools you need to easily set up a WordPress site and prepare to migrate from Weebly to WordPress.
Install and configure WordPress
There are a few different ways you can install WordPress on your chosen domain name and get it working properly. How you install it will likely be based on the hosting platform you chose to go with.
If you’re on a hosting provider that uses cPanel, then setting up WordPress there isn’t that hard. There is a one-click installation process, but there are certain details that need to be completed and options to consider. Non-tech users may experience some issues.
3 Methods to Migrate a Website from Weebly to WordPress
From this point, you are ready to migrate. There are three main ways to migrate your site from Weebly to WordPress. These include:
- Manual migration (no DIY)
- Automated migration (free and paid plugin)
- Outsource migration (paid)
We went over all three forms together.
Manual migration
Manually migrating your website from Weebly to WordPress is really not a difficult task. Actually, this is probably the way you want to do it, since this is the simplest process. All you have to do is copy and paste content from one place to another.
The most attractive part of doing the migration manually is that you are making sure that each piece of content arrives correctly, in the exact way that you want.
One thing to consider here is the size of your current Weebly site. Manual migration takes a bit of time, so if you have a large site, it might be a good idea to use the automated method or the outsourcing method, both of which we cover below.
Step 1: Create Pages and Posts in WordPress
Before you start copying and pasting content from Weebly to WordPress, it will help speed up the process if you create pages and posts to get started.
This speeds up that process because you don’t have to create the pages and posts as you go.
There are a couple of ways to do this; you can create the pages and posts manually, 1 by 1, or you can use a plugin called Bulk Page Creator to mass create pages much faster.
If you want to use this plugin, go ahead and install and activate it on your WordPress website.
Once the plugin is activated, go to Settings and then click on the Bulk Page Builder tab.
Example: test1, test2, test3 etc. Do not leave spaces between commas and page titles.
There is also another plugin you can use for this process. The Quick Bulk Post & Page Creator plugin allows you to do exactly the same thing as the Bulk Page Creator, except it expands to posts, media, hierarchies, and much more.
Once you install this plugin, click Tools and then choose the Quick Post Builder tab.
Once on the plugin options page, you will see that this plugin offers a bit more functionality. However, we want to use it to create bulk posts. You can see what we wrote in some post examples.
Go ahead and create the post titles you need, set the settings to your preference using the options, and then click the Bulk Insert button at the bottom of the page when you’re ready to create your posts.
When you do this, you can go to the Messages section of your dashboard and see that the relevant posts have been created.
Automated migration
Automating the migration from Weebly to a WordPress website can be good because you can get away from the more manual routine of copying and pasting. However, oftentimes using plugins to move content like this can leave you with various things that you might need to sort out after the import is done.
There is also the problem of finding the right plugin that gives you all the necessary tools in one place.
There are a number of plugin options that can help you through this process. The problem is that many of them are very old and haven’t been updated in a while. True, most of them still work, but for this part of the article, we wanted to find something that was free and up-to-date.
To do this, we are going to use the Feedzy RSS Aggregator plugin. Not only does this plugin provide a solid way to help you automate the migration process from Weebly to WordPress, but it also has a premium version of the plugin available.
It should be noted that we are using the free version of this plugin to perform the post migration process. If you want more functionality when bringing in posts, feel free to dig into the premium version and see if it offers anything you need.
We will transfer your site from Weebly to WordPress using this more automated method.
Step 1: Install and activate the Feedzy plugin
While in your WordPress dashboard, head over to the plugin installation area by clicking on Plugins and then Add New. This takes you to where you need to be to find the Feedzy plugin.
Go ahead and search for Feedzy using the available search field. When you see it, install and activate it directly from your control panel.
Now that the plugin is installed and activated, you are ready to use the functionality it provides. What we’re going to do is use it to take your RSS feed from the Weebly website and use that feed to create posts on your new WordPress site.
Step 2: Find the “Import Posts” tab
With Feedzy activated, find the main tab in your WordPress dashboard and click on it. From there, you need to click the Import Posts button to create a new import and fetch the posts from your Weebly site.
Once in this section, go ahead and click the New Import button at the top of the page. This will take you to the main Feedzy configuration options and allow you to import RSS feeds to your website.
Step 3: Import Weebly Posts to WordPress
At this point, you have reached the main feed import page for the plugin. You are going to use this page to import Weebly feeds directly into your new WordPress website.
Go ahead and give your import a name. The name can be whatever is relevant to the feed or whatever you want it to be. Remember, you can bring in multiple feeds one at a time if needed.
You want to put your Weebly site’s feed URL directly into the field labeled “Source”. If you’re wondering what exactly your Weebly feed URL is, it’s usually one of the following:
- https://yourdomain.com/1/feed
- https://yourdomain.com/feed
- https://yourdomain.com/rss
From there, fill in the rest of the settings and configurations as you see fit. Remember, not all feed settings will look the same. Much of how you do this part of the process depends on your settings.
Here is the layout of what you are going to be looking at. You can see that some options are not available because they are only part of the premium version.
You can continue to scroll down and assign more items.
When you have all the options filled in as you like, it’s time to click the Save and Activate button at the bottom right of the page.
This automatically imports the feed and takes you back to the “Import Posts” section.
From here, you’ll see what was found and imported from the feed you chose.
Step 4: Import pages and images
As is the case with the manual method, exporting pages and images from Weebly to WordPress needs to be done differently, as the pages are not included in the RSS feed.
You have a couple of options here, depending on how many pages you have. You can use the copy and paste method we talked about earlier to finish your pages, or you can use a couple of different plugins to do the trick.
If you need to use the plugin method, go to your Weebly website and export the pages as HTML files. You can also ask for their support to do this for you, though you may have to wait a few days for a response.
Once you have the pages in HTML format, you can use a plugin like HTML Import to import those page files into your WordPress site.
Feel free to manually save them and then upload them to your WordPress media library as far as images are concerned.
You can also bulk upload files via FTP or SFTP. If you are familiar with this option, it will save you some time.
Outsource Weebly to WordPress Migration
There is one more way to easily migrate from Weebly to WordPress with little to no hassle. If you are interested in outsourcing the project, then this is a great way to go.
There are a couple of websites that offer excellent Weebly to WordPress migration services. This allows you to enter a bit of information, then sit back and let them take care of it for you.
We have two excellent suggestions for you.
CMS2CMS
CMS2CMS is an automated service that gives you the ability to migrate from any platform directly to WordPress.
They provide an effortless, smooth and fully automated process. Despite being a premium service, it provides a free demo migration that transfers limited content. That way you can see exactly how it works and how easy the process is.
CMS2CMS also offers a free migration calculator that you can complete quite quickly and get the migration cost in a few clicks.
If you want to try the limited process for free, sign up for an account on their website and go through their step-by-step process to see if it suits you.
WordHerd
Another good option available to outsource your Weebly to WordPress site migration would be WordHerd.
They provide full service migration services that allow you to move from any platform to WordPress.
It doesn’t matter how big or small your site is. WordHerd works with everyone from small business sites to large corporations.
To get started with a free quote for your Weebly to WordPress migration, visit their website and fill out the “free quote” form.
Although we like to do things ourselves, sometimes (depending on the situation) it may be better to simply outsource the migration. Yes, you will pay something, but it is a guaranteed process and you can get it up and running faster than the manual and automated process.
Post Migration
Whichever method you choose, there are a few things to consider after the migration process is complete.
Themes and Plugins
WordPress has themes for any niche, so choose one to use for your new site. You can install and customize it however you want. These themes make designing easy and very easy to use. Yes, there may be a slight learning curve, but after going over a few things, you should have no problem building and designing your new site.
On the contrary, WordPress also has a massive library of plugins. You can download and install any plugin you like to help extend the functionality of your website. Be sure to include the best WordPress plugins available, as these will help power your site.
Permalinks
It’s also important to make sure your permalink structure is what you want it to be. You can access permalinks in your WordPress dashboard and configure them to be exactly what you want.
We understand that there is a lot to think about when using WordPress permalinks, so this ultimate guide to WordPress permalinks will help.
Point your DNS
Last but not least, if you haven’t already, your last order of business is to point the website’s DNS away from Weebly and towards your hosting platform. Phluit simplifies this process.
Once that’s done, you have the opportunity to go live right away, or work in a staging environment to get the site where you want it to be before you push it live.
Summary
Migrating a website from Weebly to WordPress doesn’t have to be an overly complicated process. However, it could be a more intensive process based on the amount of content and what plugins and tools you have access to.
That is why we provide three ways to perform this process. So between manual, automated, and outsourcing options, you should be able to find a way that works for you.
How do you prefer to migrate your site from Weebly to WordPress? Let us know in the comments section!
