Today, I talk about the pros and cons of WordPress vs Wix and how to migrate from WP to Wix quickly and efficiently. More at www.bemovingforward.com.
Moving Forward is also available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher Radio, Google Play, Spotify, and now Amazon Music.
Test the waters before you migrate
On episode 324, I talked about some of the changes that occurred when I migrated from WordPress to Wix. Today, I'm going to talk about the migration itself and how to make it as seamless and easy as possible.
When it comes to websites, the beauty of WordPress and Wix is that you can test them out for free. You don't have to go "all in" on one or the other without knowing what you're getting. Both WordPress.com and Wix.com allow you to set up free websites or blog that you can take live. If you're just starting out your blog, vlog or podcast, I recommend you begin with the free options. Sometimes, I see podcasters and websites that take full advantage of the free versions without upgrading at all. While it may lack some of the benefits of the premium versions such as a fully personalized URL and other enhancements, there's a lot you can do and you may find that the free versions more than suit your needs. My philosophy is to use the free versions of platforms to test the waters, see which one fits best, and upgrade later if you need to.
Have a plan if you want to migrate
But let's say you're already on WordPress and you want to migrate to Wix. You can use the "test the waters" option before you commit.
Set up a free Wix account.
Explore the website templates and set one up.
Recreate the basic architecture of your website.
Migrate the blog.
Migrating the blog
Let's explore step 4 a little closer. This was one of my biggest concerns about migrating back to Wix. I had well over 300 blogs and show notes from the podcast and was worried that I would have to manually recreate them, including the text, graphics and links. This is what initially kept me from seriously considering this as a serious option.
Then, I dug a little more into Wix and found out that it has a really easy way to migrate blog content from an existing WordPress site. When you set up a Wix blog page, there's an option that allows you to input your existing blog address and with the press of a button, recreate it on Wix.
Depending on how much content you have, it may take a while so you may want to do something else while Wix processes this. My blog took around 30-40 minutes. Not bad and far less time than if I had to do this manually.
However, it didn't do a 100% perfect job. The first time I tried it, I got a notice saying that 10-15 blogs didn't migrate and would require me to manually recreate them. Since I hate doing unnecessary work, I delete the Wix blog and tried again. It took several tries but around the third or fourth attempt, Wix got all of the content.
The final result was around 90% perfect. The text and most of the graphics transitioned over fine. Links to external sites also migrated perfectly. The only things I had to adjust were some of the blog titles (Wix cut off some of the longer ones though not due to any space limitations) and links to internal content, including other blog posts, which defaulted back to the original WordPress site. This is where testing the waters is a great strategy. I could create a whole new website without having to pay a dime to see how it looked and without impacting the original WordPress site.
While I would have to go back and make adjustments, the migration worked well enough that I could make an informed decision on the switch. I upgraded my Wix site to a premium plan (based on a great deal that they offered in December - January), pointed the domain servers to Wix, and turned off the renewal on my WordPress host on Bluehost.
The website went live the same day and I've been happy ever since. For more on the pros and cons for WordPress and Wix, check out episode 325.
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