How to Move From Weebly to WordPress

While Weebly provides a simple way to get a website up and running, eventually, it makes sense to migrate to a more powerful platform like WordPress. However, without experience of coding (or hiring a developer), you might not know how to move from Weebly to WordPress exactly.

Fortunately, there are two ways to set up a new WordPress website with all your Weebly data. The quickest method enables you to automate the process. But, you can also import all of your Weebly blog posts, pages, and images manually.

In this post, I’ll take a look at what you need to get started. Then, we’ll show you two ways to convert Weebly to WordPress. Let’s get to it!

What you need before you get started

If you want to transfer Weebly to WordPress, there are a few things you’ll need to have in place before you start the migration.

First off, it’s important to set up your basic WordPress website, if you haven’t done so already.

Your WordPress website will be empty until you migrate over your Weebly content. However, you’ll want to have WordPress in place before you start the migration process.

Here’s the basic process to set up WordPress:

1. Purchase web hosting, which is what will power the WordPress software. Unlike Weebly, WordPress doesn’t have its own built-in hosting.
2. Install the WordPress software on your web hosting.
3. Access your WordPress dashboard to configure basic settings.

For an easy way to get up and running, we recommend using Bluehost’s WordPress hosting. Not only is Bluehost easy to use, but it will also pre-install WordPress for you so that your site is working right away.

If you’d like more help, we have full guides on how to set up WordPress on Bluehost and how to make a WordPress website.

If you’re not already using a custom domain name for your Weebly site (e.g., you’re using a subdomain like yoursite.weebly.com instead of yoursite.com), then you’ll also need to get a domain name for your WordPress site.

If you use Bluehost, it will give you a free domain name for the first year and also automatically configure the domain name to work with your WordPress site.

How to move from Weebly to WordPress

Now that you’ve got everything prepared, let’s take a look at how to convert a Weebly site to WordPress.

In this section, we’ll look at how to migrate your Weebly data to WordPress, which is most of the migration process (though we’ll also cover a few other housekeeping steps later on).

We’ll give you two options here. You can choose whichever approach looks better to you:

• WeeblytoWP importer tool – this is the simplest option and a great starting point for most people.
• Manual migration – you can manually move your content with a little elbow grease and the help of some tools in certain places. It might be a good option if you want a little more control over how you move your data from Weebly to WordPress.

1. Migrate Weebly data automatically using WeeblytoWP

The simplest way to move from Weebly to WordPress is to use the free WeeblytoWP importer which is the only complete solution for handling the migration.

To get started, head over to the importer and enter your Weebly website URL:

Then, enter your name and email address, and choose an export format. By default, this is set to WXR and it’s recommended to stick with this option to prevent issues arising further down the line.

Lastly, choose whether you want to include pages in the export. Then, click on Export my Weebly Website. When this is done, right-click on the download button and select Save Link As. This will download the .xml file (using the WXR format) to your computer.

Now, log into your WordPress dashboard to import the file. Go to Tools → Import and find the WordPress option at the bottom of the list. Click on Install Now → Run Importer:

Choose the file from your computer and click on Upload file and import:

On the next screen, you can assign authors to your content with options to import an author and assign posts to an existing author. You can also download and import file attachments to place your Weebly images in the WordPress Media Library. Then, click on Submit.

At this point, WordPress will import your Weebly content into the WordPress database. You’ll see a success message when the process is complete.

2. Move from Weebly to WordPress manually

If you don’t want to use the WeeblytoWP import tool, you can manually convert a Weebly site to WordPress using a variety of tools. This way, you’ll migrate your blog posts, pages, and images separately, giving you more control over the process.

How to import your Weebly blog posts to WordPress

If you want to move your Weebly blog posts to WordPress you can use the Feedzy plugin. This enables you to take content from any RSS feed and import it as WordPress blog posts.

Note – you’ll need the premium version of Feedzy to do this.

To get started, you’ll need to install and activate the plugin in the WordPress dashboard. Then, go to Feedzy → Import Posts → New Import.

Here, give your import a name and paste your Weebly website’s feed URL into the RSS Feed sources box:

This is usually your Weebly domain followed by either rss or feed. Click on the + icon to add the feed to the import.

If you’re using Feedzy Pro, you can move to the Filters section to customize the import. Then, in the Map content section, you’re able to assign feed elements to the corresponding values in the WordPress database:

You can define the post type, post taxonomy, and post status (draft/published). Then, you can insert tags into the correct fields.

So, it should look something like this:

Now, click on Save & Activate Importing at the bottom of the page.

On the Import Posts page, find the import you just created. Here, click on Run Now to start the import:

When this is complete, head to Posts → All Posts to check that your Weebly blog posts have imported successfully.

How to copy and paste page content from Weebly to WordPress

Now that you’ve imported your Weebly blog posts, you might also need to move your web pages. Unfortunately, there are no automated tools to make this process easier in the manual process.

Instead, you’ll need to manually copy and paste your Weebly pages to WordPress one-by-one. However, the good news is that most websites often have a lot less pages than posts.

All you have to do is open the Weebly editor and copy all the content that you want to keep. Then, switch over to the WordPress editor and paste your content into the screen.

If you want more design control than what the default WordPress editor offers, you can install a page builder plugin like Elementor.

How to import images from Weebly to WordPress

If you want to import images from Weebly over to WordPress, you can install a plugin which makes this process super quick and easy. One of the best plugins for the job is WP All Import (although, you’ll need the premium version).

WP All Import provides various ways to handle image imports. However, the simplest method is to import images from URLs.

So, once you’ve installed the plugin, go to All Import → New Import and click on Download a file → From URL:

Now, paste the URL for your Weebly website and click on Download. You’ll be asked how you want to import data from the file.

Select the relevant option(s) and proceed to Step 2. Once you get to Step 3, you can use the Drag & Drop Import Tool.

Here, head to the Images section and check the box to download images hosted elsewhere:

Then, drag and drop the element or attributes that contain your image URLs or filenames into the text box. You can enter one image per line, or separate image attributes using commas.

Next, use the Preview & Test button to check the URLs that the plugin will use during the download. If everything looks okay, continue to Step 4 and customize the import using the different options.

You’ll need to give your import a unique identifier before you can click on Continue. At this point, all you have to do is select Confirm & Run Import:

The plugin will download your Weebly images and add them to the Media Library.

Tasks to complete following the migration

Although you’ve transferred your Weebly site to WordPress, here are some important steps to complete following the procedure. These apply regardless of which method you used to move your Weebly content.

1. Set up redirects (if using a Weebly subdomain) or change nameservers

If your website was running on a Weebly subdomain, you’ll need to change your domain name. To do this, log into your Weebly dashboard and click on Edit Site.

Then, select Settings → SEO and find the Header Code section:

Here, add the following line of code: <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url=http://YOURNEWDOMAIN.com/">

Naturally, you’ll need to replace YOURNEWDOMAIN with the domain of your WordPress website. Then, click on Save → Publish. Now, if you try to access your Weebly website, you should be redirected to your new WordPress site.

However, if you used a custom domain for your Weebly site and you want to keep it, go to Website > Domains from your Weebly dashboard:

Find the relevant domain and click on Edit.

Then, on the Domain Settings page, select Change. Now, you need to enter your new WordPress host’s nameservers so that your Weebly website points to your new server.

You can usually find the DNS addresses of your new nameservers by logging into your web hosting account. However, the location will vary depending on your web host.

If you can’t find this information, you can always contact your web host for help. Plus, it’s important to note that nameserver changes can take up to 48 hours to update.

2. Update WordPress permalink structure to match Weebly

Weebly uses a URL structure for posts and pages that is different to the one that is used by WordPress. Therefore, you’ll need to update the WordPress permalink structure to avoid serving visitors 404 error pages when they try to access your site.

To do this for your blog posts, go to Settings → Permalinks in your WordPress dashboard. Select the Custom Structure option and type /blog/%postname% into the text field:

Then, click on Save Changes to update your permalinks. However, for your pages, you’ll need to add the .html extension to the end of the URLs.

The simplest way to do this is to install the Add Any Extension to Pages plugin. Then, navigate to Settings → Add Any Extension to Pages:

Here, enter .html in the Extension field and click on Update Settings.

Now, return to the Settings → Permalinks screen and click on Save Changes to make the new extensions work. At this point, all your pages will have the .html extension added to the URLs.

3. Test your website

Now that you’ve migrated from Weebly to WordPress, it’s time to make sure that the process has gone smoothly. Here are some useful checks to carry out:

• Make sure all your pages and posts have been added.
• Visit the Media Library to check that your images have been imported.
• Test various links, forms, and widgets.
• Open pages and posts to make sure they don’t return a 404 error.

If everything is working as it should, you can start to enjoy the flexibility of the WordPress platform. Therefore, it’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with the block editor and install a beautiful WordPress theme.

Conclusion

As your website grows, you might require a more flexible platform. Therefore, it makes sense to move Weebly to WordPress. Fortunately, you can use the automatic WeeblytoWP tool to export all your Weebly data to a new WordPress website.

Or, you can use the Feedzy plugin to transfer your blog posts. Meanwhile, you can copy and paste page content, and import images using the premium WP All Import plugin. Then, you’ll need to update permalinks, set up redirects, and test your new website.

Do you have any questions about how to migrate your site to WordPress? Let us know in the comments below!