How to Migrate from Weebly to WordPress (Step-by-Step Guide)

Have you ever felt like your website is too basic? Weebly is easy to use and simple, but as the website grows, we need something more flexible, customizable, and scalable. That is where WordPress exactly fits in, offering a wide range of plugins to customize your site. WordPress gives you more control over the website.

Let us explore what makes WordPress so popular and why people want to move to WordPress, and the steps involved in the Weebly to WordPress migration. 

Why Migrate from Weebly to WordPress?

Weebly is a basic and beginner-friendly website builder that allows even a non-technical person to build websites, blogs, and online stores. It has a drag-and-drop interface.

But due to its limitations, many users prefer a more robust and flexible platform. WordPress is a powerful Content Management System (CMS) providing more flexibility and control to users. Some of the features of WordPress that are making it so popular are

• Greater control: WordPress is an open-source platform that gives more ownership to the users. Users can choose their service provider and switch it off when not needed.  Meaning it provides full control over the website’s data, files, and server environment.  
• Better Content Management: WordPress is the most trusted Content Management System, which helps us to organize content with categories, tags, and custom post types. This enables easy navigation for the users and makes the website more organized. 
• SEO capabilities: WordPress offers many more SEO features than Weebly, like customizable permalinks, advanced SEO plugins such as Yoast. It provides better visibility over the search engine rankings than other search engines. Plugins like Yoast SEO provide advanced features for optimizing each and every page.
• Flexibility and customization: WordPress has nearly 60,000 plugins. With those plugins, we can customize each and every part of the site, such as changing colours, fonts, and the landing page, without doing much coding. 
• Scalability: WordPress is highly scalable; it is capable of handling increased traffic without any performance issues.
• Community support: WordPress’s community consists of users, developers, and engineers - this means more training materials, forums, and security updates are available to secure your website.
• Reduced cost: In Weebly, we need to pay monthly for using tier-based features, whereas in WordPress, the pricing depends on hosting and themes. This has reduced the costs, resulting in a better value.

Things to Consider Before Migrating from Weebly to WordPress

By understanding the differences between Weebly and WordPress features, planning and choosing the right tools, we can make a successful transition from Weebly to WordPress. Some factors need to be looked into are 

• Getting started: Identify the scope and volume of data, be it blogs, pages, or images, in your Weebly site. Evaluate which migration is required.
• Selecting the hosting provider: Unlike Weebly, WordPress requires a separate hosting provider. Factors like storage, bandwidth, speed, and performance need to be considered while choosing a hosting provider. Give more preference to the provider that gives good speed and provides free migration assistance. Ensure that the provider meets the site’s performance, security, and scalability needs.‍
• Domain:  If a custom domain is used in Weebly, we can use the same domain name and make it point to your WordPress site. If using a weekly subdomain, moving from a Weebly site to WordPress will require a new domain name. ‍
• Manual data exporting is needed: Weebly does not support one-click export of data. All the content and images need to be downloaded and re-uploaded in WordPress manually.‍
• Plugin and theme selection: Choose a WordPress theme that aligns with your design. Use plugins and page builders to recreate Weebly’s page layout in WordPress. Configure the permalink structure to create SEO- friendly URLs. ‍
• URL Mapping and Redirects: Weebly’s URL structure is different from WordPress’s, so create a mapping of old Weebly URLs to new WordPress URLs. Set up 301 redirects from the Weebly URL  to prevent 404 (Page not found) and preserve existing SEO. Use a redirection plugin in WordPress.

How to Migrate from Weebly to WordPress (Step-by-Step)

Convert Weebly to WordPress systematically using the below comprehensive approach for minimizing the downtime and preserving SEO values.

1. Backup Weebly site: Weebly allows you to take a backup of the site’s content, including pages and images. This will prevent data loss. Set up a staging environment and test your backup to ensure its data integrity.
2. Set up WordPress, hosting, and domain: The first step in moving a Weebly site to WordPress is selecting a hosting provider and domain name. Choose a hosting provider that offers a one-click installation process, and start installing WordPress on your hosting account. Update DNS domain settings to point to your new WordPress hosting.‍
3. Export data from Weebly: Weebly does not support a direct export tool, so we need to do it manually, through XML files, or using third-party tools. Go to Weebly’s dashboard and copy every page and paste it manually into the WordPress dashboard. Weebly usually generates an RSS feed for the blogs. Save this XML format, it will be useful when we are doing bulk imports. For bulk blog posts, we can use a third-party tool like weeblytowordpress.com. Use the Weebly to WordPress Importer plugin to generate an XML file. Provide Weebly’s site URL, name, and email address to the tool and create a WordPress-compatible XML file. ‍
4. Import Weebly content into WordPress: Images need to be re-uploaded in the WordPress media library. Now import the data into WordPress using the Weebly to WordPress Importer tool. Upload the exported XML file and assign authors for the WordPress content. An existing user from Weebly is enough. Ensure “download and import file attachments” is checked to pull the images from the Weebly site. This step is important to ensure the images are copied into the new site. In WordPress, use the RSS import plugin and fetch the blog posts. Publish the blogs as new WordPress posts. ‍
5. Choose a theme and customize: Select a theme and adjust the menus, rebuild navigation, and change the appearance according to it.‍
6. Setting up DNS, Redirects, and Permalinks: This is an important step for SEO. Configure the Permalinks in the WordPress dashboard; this will make sure that old Weebly’s URLs are pointed to the new WordPress’s URL. Choose a user-friendly and SEO-friendly structure. Update the domain’s DNS settings to point to your new WordPress host. Set 301 redirects to tell the search engines that your data has been moved permanently to WordPress and 404 errors have been prevented.‍
7. WordPress plugins: WordPress offers more plugins. Yoast SEO and Rank Math are needed for SEO. Wordfence and Sucuri are necessary for security concerns. WP Rocket and W3 Total Cache are required for optimizing performance. Choose and install the essential plugins in WordPress.‍
8. Launch and Test the new WordPress site:  Now that all data is migrated, the domain is set, verify that text, images, downloads, and media have been transferred correctly. Ensure all internal and external links and forms work as expected.

What to Do After You Migrate from Weebly to WordPress

Some points that need to be considered after the Weebly to WordPress migration are

• Validate WordPress: Check whether all pages and blogs are functioning correctly. Look for broken links or missing images. Make sure that all forms, menus, and buttons are working properly.
• Performance optimization: After the migration to WordPress, install caching plugins and optimize the speed of images. Some images might need manual adjustment.
• Adjust Permalinks: Update the permalink structure in WordPress to match previous Weebly URLs. 
• Decommission Weebly: Once the WordPress site is working properly, cancel the Weebly hosting. Retain the domain name (if it was registered with Weebly) or purchase a new domain name. Take a buffer time of 1-2 weeks and ensure that no issues have been raised, deactivate Weebly.

Why Choose Entrans for Your Weebly to WordPress Migration

Weebly to WordPress migration is not a complicated process, but it is time-consuming and requires expert help. Entrans takes away the risks associated with Weebly to WordPress migration with skilled professionals. Our specialists have deep knowledge of how both Weebly and WordPress are built.

From pre-migration to post-migration and optimization, we ensure an effective and secure transition. If you're ready to migrate from Weebly to WordPress, Entrans is here to help. Contact us today to discuss your needs and how we can assist in your migration journey.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs):

Can I transfer my Weebly site to WordPress?

Yes, it is possible to transfer a Weebly site to WordPress. This can be done by acquiring a domain and hosting, exporting the content from Weebly, importing it into Postgres, and setting up redirects and permalinks.

Can I migrate my Weebly site to another hosting provider?

Yes, it can be done. But it requires a manual process of extracting and rebuilding the site on a new hosting provider.

How do I convert my existing website into WordPress?

To convert the existing website into WordPress, we need to set up WordPress (including selecting the domain name and hosting provider), migrate the data into WordPress, and choose a theme according to the needs.

Can I transfer my existing website to WordPress without losing content?

We can transfer all the contents of the existing website without losing them. This requires a manual migration or plugin tools to automate the migration.

Will my SEO be affected after migrating from Weebly to WordPress?

SEO will be affected temporarily after the Weebly to WordPress migration due to its downtime. This can be fixed by proper redirection and preserving URL structures.

Which is easier to use, WordPress or Weebly?

Generally, Weebly is easier to use than WordPress because of its drag-and-drop interface. But Weebly has a limited ecosystem and basic features, whereas WordPress offers extensive features and requires technical knowledge to navigate the interface.