How to Migrate Website from Joomla to WordPress?

Every weekend we post an article that our employees research. That helps them to groom their knowledge and explore it to the other. That is the post written by me as a guide. Hopefully, that will help you.

If you want to move your website from Joomla to WordPress, this guide will be helpful for you.

Can use WordPress to create nearly any kind of site you can imagine, and the development possibilities are pretty much endless.

Before starting, you have to take care of a few things.

You already have to host for your Joomla site, but you want to switch to a new web host specializing in WordPress. If your current service is crappy, then it is worth it to move.

Hosting is essential for your site’s performance, so don’t choose the cheapest host possible.

After the hosting process, you need to set up a temporary domain. That will be where you will install WordPress and transfer the content from the Joomla site (that is still alive) for the time being.

Ask your host to set up a temporary domain for you, or you can search on google “set up a substitute domain on + your hostname.” After you transfer all your website content, you can move your URL from this temporary one to your existing domain.

It is required to optimize all the permalinks to make your website SEO-friendly. They should be short and accurate to explain the page or post. Make a list of current Joomla URLs just if you want to alter them for your WordPress site.

It will make it easy to set up redirects later, so people visit URLs on your previous website. It will be redirected to the equivalent on your new site.

Once you get the temporary domain, now is the time to set up WordPress.

After installation, you are ready to get started with the actual migration. We will be using the free version of FG Joomla to WordPress for this tutorial, but there is a premium version. You can see the variations between the two here.

Now, go to Plugins > Add New and search for FG Joomla to WordPress. Click on Install Now and wait until it is done; then click Activate.

This plugin is beneficial and should make moving the content pretty simple.

You may have to move some content manually or even fix some of the things post-migration.

Now take your Joomla database details, which will use to import data into WordPress.

Here is where to get the info you need anyway.

Go to the System and click Global Configuration.

Then, click on the Server tab.

At the top right of this page, you will see Database Settings.

Leave this tab open with all the details by copying and pasting them when you import everything into WordPress. Also, you can copy-paste them into a text file if you want.

You will need the host, database name, database username, and database tables prefix values for the next step.

Migrating from Joomla to WordPress is much more accessible in comparison to Wix, Weebly, or Squarespace. You’re ready actually to start moving the content.

Go to the WordPress dashboard and click on Tools > Import in the left sidebar.

There are several import tools included with WordPress by default, but none for Joomla. That is why we installed the FG Joomla to WordPress plugin in #1 Step.

Look for the Joomla (FG) in the table and click on the Run Importer below it.

That will help you to reach the page with several options to set for your migration.

Near the top of this screen, you will see an Empty WordPress content button. If you have created any posts, pages, menus, attachments, tags, categories, taxonomies, or custom posts, users and comments on the click the button will delete them.

Also, keep the default WordPress theme for now. You can add more and change the theme once the migration process is finished.

For the migration to work correctly, it is ideal to have a blank installation. If you already added some content to your site for some weird reason, make sure you back it up before you click the Empty WordPress content.

Under Joomla website parameters, enter the URL of your live Joomla website. That is used to pull any media off of the current site.

In the Joomla database parameters section, you have to paste the database information you copied in Step #2.

• Hostname
• Database
• Username
• Joomla Table Prefix

After you have entered the details, click on Test the database connection to make sure it is working correctly.

In the Behavior section, you can specify the items you would like to import and your Joomla pages and posts.

You can leave the defaults for the first two items. I guess you don’t need to import the old archived Joomla posts.

When it comes to importing media items, you have several options. Also, you can choose to skip the media import altogether, which will help speed up the migration process.

Option 1: Manual

I suggest you manually download all the images and other media from Joomla that will help you to properly optimize the images before uploading them into the new site.

You can save the media items by dragging them to a folder on your computer or using Save Image and right-clicking on PC, or control-clicking on Apple.

Once you get all the images on the computer, you can resize them to fit your new theme. Please give them the descriptive filenames and ensure that they are all optimized on the web.

Option 2: Automated

If your site is enormous and contains tons of media items. In that case, maybe you want to skip the full manual option and import all the media using FG Joomla to WordPress.

Then you can choose one of the following image optimization plugins to diminish the size of your image files:

• EWWW Image Optimizer
• Imagify Image Optimizer

In the Meta keywords section under Media, you can choose whether you want to import keywords from Joomla to use as tags in WordPress. Properly use the tags is an excellent way to help organize the content.

You can also leave that unchecked and make a new tag manually after you migrate.

The last but not the least option lets you import your old Joomla posts as pages on your new site. I don’t know why you want to do this, but I don’t see many things. So that is the reason why it exists (I knew there was a logical explanation!).

Finally, select the Start / Resume import button let the plugin do the thing.

You can trace the migration progress in the bar and recognize any problems with importing in the box below.

Tip: To get more control over things, you can leave most options unchecked and set things manually instead.

It is best to see how all your content looks on your new WordPress site once you choose a theme in many cases. Every site is different, and you want to adjust everything to fit the particular layout you choose.

Hurray! Now website migration is completed. But don’t get too much excited; you still have to fix a few things. That we will discuss in our next article or if you liked this post or want to know Post-migration step comment on the box.

Also Read: What Is Website Speed Optimization?