Wix to WordPress: How to Transfer Your Blog (9 Simple Steps)

In this simple step-by-step guide, I’m going to show you how to transfer your blog or website from Wix to WordPress.

Migrating from Wix to WordPress isn’t a trend that started recently; it’s been going on for years. While Wix does a good job advertising its platform on TV and with YouTube ads, WordPress doesn’t do a bit of advertising.

So what inevitably happens is someone (perhaps you) sees the ad and signs up – only to find the platform severely lacking.

If that happened or you just want to switch from Wix to WordPress, I don’t blame you. I don’t know of a single successful blogger who doesn’t use the WordPress blogging platform.

In fact, WordPress is now used by 30% of all websites. Just to reiterate, that’s 30% of all websites on the internet – not just blogs!

Ready to transfer your blog or website from Wix to WordPress?

Let’s do this.

1. Get WordPress hosting

Having your website hosted on Wix is perhaps the only advantage of Wix over WordPress. When you make the switch to WP, you need to get your own hosting for your website.

While this sounds complicated, it really isn’t.

I recommend using HostGator. While there are plenty of other hosting options, trust me on this: HostGator is the way to go.

Complete the signup process and choose their lowest-cost hosting option.

You can uncheck any package extras, enter your payment info, and checkout.

2. Log in to WordPress

Once you’re all signed up with your hosting, you need to install WordPress next. Luckily for you, installing WordPress is as easy as one click in the dashboard.

So at this stage, you just need to log in to your WordPress dashboard to set up your website.

This is what your WordPress dashboard should look like:

Since this dashboard is new to you, I encourage you to click around and see what everything does first.

You’re going to be spending a lot of time here, so it’s important to familiarize yourself with your digital surroundings.

There are a couple of settings I want you to change first.

1. Go to Settings > General and add a Site Title and Tagline.

2. Go to Settings > Permalinks and choose the Post name option.

Note: If you see a lot of alerts or notifications, don’t worry. These are plugins you can safely deactivate and delete in the Plugins section.

3. Choose a theme for your website

Customizing your WordPress website is as simple as choosing a blog theme. There are tons of themes to choose from, but the one I recommend using is Astra.

To install this theme, head over to Appearance > Themes and search for Astra.

Then click Install and Activate to complete the setup.

You can take a peek at what your new WordPress blog looks like at the moment with this new theme. The link to your website (it has a temporary domain at the moment) is in the upper-left-hand corner in your WordPress admin.

If you want to move on to the next step, you can. But the power of Astra comes with the thousands of templates they have that are ready to use.

Here’s how to add these templates to your blog.

Go to Plugins > Add new and search for “Starter Templates.” Then, install and activate the plugin.

4. Install a drag-and-drop page builder

If you’re migrating from Wix, you already know all about using drag-and-drop page builders. Well, WordPress has them too.

We’re going to use Elementor to visually design your blog posts and pages and give you that Wix-like feel.

Click here to see how easy it is to design a blog with Elementor.

To install Elementor, go to Plugins > Add new and look for Elementor.

At this point, you now have all the tools you need to build your blog or website!

5. Get your WordPress blog ready for migration

You can spend some time designing your blog to make it look just right before you start migrating your content.

• Add your logo or create one with Canva if you don’t already have one
• Create blog categories in Posts > Categories
• Create a menu in Appearances > Menu
• Add important WordPress plugins
• Install an image optimization plugin too

6. Transfer your Wix content to WordPress

Now we’re finally ready to start the migration process.

While you could just copy and paste your content to WordPress, there’s a faster way.

Importing posts

In this method, we’re going to get the “feed” of your blog posts on Wix and import that feed into WordPress.

The steps are:

• Add feed.xml or blog-feed.xml to the end of your Wix URL
• Go to this page and save the file to your computer (File > Save Page As)
• In WordPress, go to Tools > Import
• Find RSS and click Install now
• Once installed, click Run Importer
• Upload and import the file you saved earlier

Then go to Posts to verify they were all imported.

Importing pages

You can’t import your Wix pages the same way you can import your posts. So for your pages, you’ll have to copy and paste the content of your pages into WordPress pages.

Importing images

For images, the manual way is saving each image from your Wix site and uploading it to WordPress in Media > Add new.

For a more automated way, use the Auto Upload Images plugin.

Go to Plugins > Add new and look for Auto Upload Images. Then, install and activate the plugin.

This plugin works automatically by looking for an external image in the post, uploading it, then replacing it.

7. Use a Redirection plugin

If you were using Wix with your own domain name, you’re going to want to make sure your old URLs match your new URLs.

To do this, edit the “URL slug” in WordPress to match the same as your old Wix posts.

URL slug example: https://www.yourdomain.com/this-is-the-url-slug/

If you don’t want to (or can’t) keep the same link structure as before, you’re going to need to use a redirection plugin.

Go to Plugins > Add new and look for Redirection

To set up your redirections, go to Tools > Redirection.

Add your original Wix URL as the Source URL and the new WordPress URL as the target URL.

Note: You want to make sure and choose “Ignore & pass parameters to the target.” You can set this as the default in the Options.

8. Transfer your domain away from Wix

The last step is transferring your domain name away from Wix and to your domain registrar like GoDaddy, for example.

To complete this step, follow these detailed instructions from Wix.

• In Wix, go to to Subscriptions and click on Domains
• Click the Show More icon ( … )
• Select Transfer Away from Wix
• Click Transfer Domain
• Click I Still Want to Transfer

Once you’re done, you’ll receive a transfer authorization code via email, which you’ll need to enter at your domain registrar to complete the transfer.

9. Check that everything works

After transferring the domain name and changing the nameservers (provided by your new host), it will take 24-48 hours for your new WordPress blog to go live on the domain.

Once the domain has propagated, visit every page to make sure everything works as expected.

I hope this helped you migrate from Wix to WordPress. If you have any questions about HostGator or WordPress, hit me up in the comments section!