Moving to a new CMS is often viewed as similar to moving from your house to a new location. As a rule, people vince at the idea of having to pack their belongings and furniture, lift them into big trucks and then spend lots of time arranging them at the new place. But let’s look at the move from the other side: you get to live in a new, more convenient and cosy dwelling (otherwise, you wouldn’t take pains to move). Moreover, it is a positive experience since you get a chance to get rid of old things and clean up your belongings, plus – change the appearance of your new home as you wish.
So, if you have been putting off your Joomla to WordPress migration for fear of too much mess, now you can look at it as a new opportunity. It will let you clean up your content, get a new, much more convenient work environment and finally live your dream website. Doesn’t it sound tempting enough? So, let’s get ready now.
In fact, the whole move to a new CMS isn’t that difficult, but it’s not the time to relax either. Well, not yet. To help make your switch from Joomla to the new WordPress smooth and fast we’ve put together a simple checklist.
1. Make a migration timeline
To stay organized and keep the whole migration thing under control, you need a detailed plan with deadlines. So, select a period for the move keeping in mind that you might need some extra time to finish up everything.
2. Review, clean up and backup content on Joomla!
So, once you set off on your Joomla to WordPress migration trip, the first thing to do is get rid of the “garbage” and do some inventory. So, go over your website and get away with all content that’s not worth being ported over. Make sure all the articles are in their places, categories and tags are right etc. Moreover, evaluate what is the volume of the content that’ll need to be migrated – how many articles/sections, users etc.
3. Install and configure new WordPress
This one is pretty clear, right? Remember to set up your WP URL structure to being SEO-friendly, so that your migrated URLs looked nice upon the move.
4. Research migration tools and pick the one
In case you haven’t got loads of content, consider moving it manually, by copy-pasting. In case there’s a lot of work and little time, you can hire a developer or utilise a migration tool like Cms2Cms. In case with the former, you’ll save lots of time as the service is automated, so the migration is carried out in several minutes to a few hours, depending on the size of the website to work with. Plus, it requires neither coding experience nor lots of efforts other than a few-step migration setup.
5. Perform your content migration
Once your migration mode is selected, schedule it and make sure to inform your website users as well as visitors, and indicate the estimated time your website might be “under maintenance”. It is best not to add new content during that time lest it should be lost. Once ready, you can start the migration.
6. Check the migrated content
So, after the Joomla! content has been ported over to your new WordPress, check out how it looks and see whether everything’s in order and where it should be. If there are any flaws, this is the best time to work on them.
7. Adjust design
After the content has been taken care of, deal with website appearance. You might need a theme adjusted to look like your Joomla! website did, or probably you want something fresh and installing a new theme will do the trick.
8. Add functionality
Similarly, to get the needed functionality, ramble over WordPress plugin directory. You will surely find both decent substitutes of your previous Joomla modules and some new plugins for more convenience.
9. Set up 301 redirects
To keep your previous rankings, it is important to set up permanent redirects from your previous URLs to the new ones, since it is likely that even if you’re keeping your domain name, the links structure will change. This will let you make the move almost unfelt for your visitors.
10. Test everything
Even if everything looks great, don’t hurry to rest on your laurels. Test every bit of your website to make sure it works properly and there is no any malfunctioning. Go over the menu, sidebars, social media icons to check that the links are live. See whether a user will be able to complete an email subscription, contact you or watch a video etc. Well, once you’ve checked it – congratulations on your successful Joomla to WordPress migration.
Final word
You feel apprehensive about your future migration? In fact, it’s not that difficult, and the free Demo that you can set up right now with Cms2Cms will prove that in just a few minutes.