Move Your Blog From Weebly To WordPress Without Losing Content
May 24th, 2017 | by Ravi Chahar || Leave a comment |
Weebly is one of the fully-hosted platforms which can be used to start your blog for free. But once you know its limitations, you want to move your blog from Weebly to WordPress.
WordPress is one of the best blogging platforms right now and people are moving from other platforms to WordPress.
It’s because most of the bloggers don’t research before they start a blog. People go with the free platforms like Weebly and after a few months, they realize that monetization, SEO optimization isn’t possible.
You would be happy to know that you can easily move your blog from Weebly to WordPress without having any coding skills.
#1. The Things to do Before Migration
Before you start the blog migration process, you have to create an environment for that. As you know, to start a WordPress blog, you require a domain name and the web hosting.
If you have already bought a custom domain name from Weebly then it can also be redirected. We will discuss it later.
For now, buy a reliable web hosting which is affordable, fast with better customer support. We recommend InmotionHosting.
There are many other web hosting including BlueHost, GreenGeeks, iPage etc. And if you want to buy a managed web hosting then go with WPEngine.
InmotionHosting also gives a domain free for one year.
Once you set up your web hosting account, you have to install WordPress. Most of the web hosting provide one-click WordPress installation.
To move your blog from Weebly to WordPress, follow the next step.
#2. Import the Content From Your Weebly Blog
Though in the previous time, there was no time to export the content from Weebly but now, you can convert the export file useable on WordPress platform.
For which, go to Weebly to WordPress Importer and fill the details of your Weebly blog.
Fill the email ID, name, Weebly blog URL, and you will see two radio buttons. Choose “WXR” file format. You will also be asked to include the pages in the export file or not.
Click on the “Export my Weebly website” button and a new page will appear to you.
It will show you a message congratulating you for generating the export file successfully. Either you can save the link or directly double-click and the download will start.
Depending on the size of the file, it will get finished. The name of the file would be export.xml.
#3. Import the Content to Your New WordPress Installation
As you have already prepared your WordPress website for migration, you have to import the Weebly content properly.
For which, you would require an official WordPress importer.
Go to Tools>>Import and you will see a list of importers. As you want to import the Weebly content so use the WordPress importer.
Click on the “install now” link below it. After getting installed, the button will turn to “run importer”.
It’s because the importer is actually a plugin developed specially for importing the content. Click on the “run importer” button and a new page will appear.
On this page, you will see a button to “choose file” from your computer. Choose the file you have exported from Weebly.
The “Upload file and import” button will become clickable once you select the file. Use it and go to the next page.
At this page, you will be asked to import the author you were using on your Weebly website. You can also assign all the content to an existing user too.
And if you want to create a new user, you can.
Don’t forget to check the box to “Download and import file attachments”. Click on the “Submit” button and you’re all set.
You will see a message to have fun which means you have successfully imported the content. If you see an error, try to export and import the file again.
Check the posts, pages, and the media file you were having on your Weebly blog. If something is wrong then you can run the import process again.
Don’t worry about the duplicate content. The WordPress importer will skip the already existing content.
#4. Redirecting Your Weebly Blog to WordPress
As you have moved the content to WordPress so your Weebly visitors should also know about it. To do that, you have to set the redirect.
For which, login to your Weebly account and go to Settings>>SEO>>Header Code and add one line of the code.
<meta http-equiv=”refresh” content=”0;url=http://www.wordpressdomain.com/”>
Don’t forget to replace the WordPress domain with the domain name you have bought for your WordPress blog.
Save the settings and you’re all set.
But if you have bought a custom domain from Weebly then you have to do different settings. You have to edit the nameservers.
As for every web hosting, you will get two nameservers.
ns1.webhost.com
ns2.webhost.com
It depends on the web hosting you buy.
Go to the domains section of your Weebly blog and select the domain name you have bought. Open the domain settings and choose the nameservers to edit.
Depending on the nameservers of your web hosting, add and don’t forget to save and publish the settings.
NOTE: You don’t need to add the above-shown code in the header section if you use a custom Weebly domain name.
#5. Set the Same Permalinks as Weebly
You have set the redirect but if the permalink structures on the WordPress blog doesn’t match to those used on Weebly, the URLs wouldn’t get redirected properly.
Instead of that, your visitors will see 404 error.
For a Weebly blog posts: http://www.domainname.com/blog/post-title/
For pages: http://www.domainname.com/page-title.html
To match the URLs, you have to set the proper permalinks structures. Login to your WordPress blog.
Go to Settings>>Permalinks and scroll down to the set the custom structure and add /blog/%postname% after that.
Save the settings and the permalink will match your Weebly post.
As mentioned before, the pages also contain .html extension which should also be added. It can be done using a WordPress plugin.
Install and activate the Add Any Extension to Pages plugin. There is nothing much to do. Just go to Settings>>Add Any Extension to Pages and you will see a space to add an extension.
Add .html and update settings.
Go to the permalinks page again and save the settings. Visit your new WordPress blog and you will see all the blog posts and pages correctly.
You can also check by visiting your Weebly blog posts which will get redirected to your WordPress blog.
As per now, you have successfully done your job. But to move your blog from Weebly to WordPress without any error, you have to troubleshoot if see any.
#6. Check for Common WordPress Errors
You should know what to do after installing WordPress and it’s possible that you can get a few errors in WordPress.
You can read this guide for 23 common WordPress errors and their solutions.
Though WordPress importer tries its best to import all the images added in your Weebly posts but still, if you see any broken image link then you can upload that image again manually.
It’s always recommended to all the pages to check if the extension plugin is working fine or not.
After that, you should install the important plugins for a WordPress blog. To boost your WordPress website speed, you can use a caching plugin.
I Hope You Can Easily Move Your Blog from Weebly to WordPress
This may be a long process and can take many minutes but once you do it right, you can enjoy this amazing platform.
WordPress has always been a user-friendly platform which is easy to use. While blog migration, you should make sure that you export the content from Weebly properly.
People make mistake and see an error while importing it to WordPress. And then don’t forget to redirect and add the same permalink structures.
I hope it wouldn’t be hard for you to move your blog from Weebly to WordPress. If you face any problem, you can drop a comment.
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