Do you want to move your website from Joomla to WordPress? While Joomla is a good content management system, it is NOT as powerful, flexible, and easy to use as WordPress. Often users may start with Joomla but eventually switch to WordPress. In this article, we will show you how to easily migrate your website from Joomla to WordPress.
Both Joomla and WordPress are open source software. Both are written in the PHP programming language, use the MySQL database, and have similar hosting requirements.
However, Joomla is more complicated to use and there are fewer extensions and layouts available to you. On the other hand, WordPress is the most popular website builder in the world, the easiest to use, with tons of extensions and design options. See our Joomla vs WordPress comparison for more details.
Now, when we say WordPress, we are talking about the WordPress.org platform and not WordPress.com. Yes, they are two very different platforms..
WordPress.com is a hosted solution that offers limited WordPress features while WordPress.org is the popular platform that everyone has come to love and use. You can see our full comparison of WordPress.com vs WordPress.org to see the main differences, but bottom line:you want to use WordPress.org.
Now that we've said that, let's take a look at what it would take to move a website from Joomla to WordPress.
The requirements for self-hosted Joomla and WordPress are quite similar. You will need a domain name and WordPress hosting account to get started with WordPress.
You probably already have a domain name and website hosting account for your Joomla website. You can use them for your WordPress website as well.
If you want to switch to a different hosting provider, we recommend that you use Bluehost. They are one of the world's leading hosting companies and an officially recommended WordPress hosting provider.
WordPress is famous for its 5-minute installation. Many good WordPress hosting companies will automatically install WordPress for you. You will also find 1-click WordPress installers within your hosting account dashboard.
Do you need more instructions? Follow our complete WordPress installation tutorial for step-by-step instructions.
Once you have WordPress installed, you will be able to login to your WordPress dashboard, which will look like this:
Now that you have WordPress installed, you are ready to import content from your Joomla website.
First, you need to install and activate the FG Joomla to WordPress plugin. For more details, check out our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
After activation, go to Tools »Import page. You will see a list of import tools available for your WordPress installation. Click the 'Run Importer' link under the Joomla Import Tool (FG).
This will launch the Joomla Importer Script (FG) and you will be prompted to provide information from your Joomla website. First, you need to enter the URL of your Joomla website and then the database settings.
You can find your database information in the administration area of your Joomla website. Simply go to System »Global Settings Page and click on the server tab.
This page will show you all the database information you will need, except for the database password. If you don't remember your Joomla database password, you can find it inside settings.php file in the root folder of your Joomla website. You can access this file by connecting to your website using an FTP client and opening it in a text editor such as notepad.
After entering your database information into the Joomla importer, click the 'Test Database Connection' button. If everything is entered correctly, you will see a success message.
Below are some additional options to control what you want to import. If you are not sure, leave these options as they are.
Go ahead and click the 'Start/Resume Importer' button to continue.
The importer will now start to fetch content from your Joomla website. This may take a while depending on how much content you have.
Once this is done, you will see a success message.
Now that you've imported content to your WordPress site, the next step is to check for internal links that might be pointing to your old website. Joomla FG importer will also fix that for you.
You need to scroll down to the bottom and click on the 'Modify Internal Links' button.
You can now visit your WordPress site to see the imported content in action.
After moving your website from Joomla to WordPress, you'll need to do some fine-tuning to finish the migration and set up your new platform.
Your old Joomla website may have a different URL structure than your WordPress site. This means that people who find your articles in search engines will now see a 404 error.
To fix this issue, you need to set up permalinks and properly redirect users and search engines to the new URLs.
First, you need to visit Settings »Permalinks Page in WordPress. In the common settings, click the post name option and then click the Save Changes button.
Next, you will need to install and activate the redirection plugin on your WordPress site. For more details, check out our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, you need to visit Tools »Redirection page. In the Source URL field, you will enter http://example.com/index.php/(.*) and in the Destination URL field http://example.com/$1 as shown in the screenshot below.
Click the 'Add Redirect' button to save your changes.
WordPress will now redirect old Joomla website URLs to your new WordPress permalink structure.
WordPress gives you access to a huge collection of themes that you can use. Themes control the look and feel of your WordPress website.
There are thousands of free and paid WordPress themes available that you can install on your website. However, not all themes are suitable for all types of websites and this plethora of options can make beginners a bit confused.
We've made this easy by doing the research and hand-picking the best WordPress themes. Here are some of our theme storefronts that you can visit to find the perfect theme for your website.
Need help installing your new theme? See our beginner's guide on how to install a WordPress theme.
Plugins are the best part about using WordPress. WordPress plugins allow you to add new features to your website.
You can use WordPress plugins to perform backups, enhance security, configure caching, start online store, and more. If you can think of a feature, chances are there's already a WordPress plugin for it.
There are thousands of free and paid WordPress plugins that you can use. Since it's easy to get overwhelmed with options, we've put together an ultimate guide on choosing the best plugins for your website.
We have also selected the essential WordPress plugins that you should install on all your WordPress websites.
WordPress is quite easy to use. However, from time to time you may find new things to learn. This is where WPBeginner can help.
WPBeginner is the largest WordPress resource site for beginners. We have a ton of helpful content created specifically for beginners, business owners, and bloggers.
The following are some of the helpful resources you'll find on WPBeginner (all of which are completely free).
Many of our users use Google to find answers on WPBeginner by simply adding 'wpbeginner' to the end of their search term.
We hope this article has helped you to move your site from Joomla to WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on the most useful tools to manage and grow your WordPress site.
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