Migrating a Wix site to WordPress
Wix gives access neither to its database nor to a full export. What can be recovered and how, what has to be rebuilt, and how to redirect Wix's own URLs to the WordPress pages.
Wix is a closed platform: the site, its design and its data stay at Wix, with no database access and no full export. Leaving Wix for WordPress therefore means recovering each type of content by a different route, and accepting that the design is rebuilt.
This article covers what is specific to leaving Wix. For a static HTML site, see migrating an HTML site to WordPress; for a site already on WordPress that changes server, moving a WordPress site to a new host.
What can be recovered, and how
The blog
The Wix blog publishes an RSS feed (your-domain/blog-feed.xml) that the WordPress RSS importer (Tools menu, then Import) can read. The feed sometimes contains only the most recent posts: compare the number of posts imported with the number published. Paid services such as CMS2CMS automate the transfer, authors and categories included; try their demo migration before paying.
The pages
Pages are copied over, usually by hand: the text in the block editor, the images one by one. It is also the time to review their titles, meta descriptions and heading structure, which the Wix editor easily leaves aside.
The images
The images of a Wix site are served by Wix (static.wixstatic.com), including in posts imported from the RSS feed. Bring them into the WordPress media library, by hand or with an external image import plugin: when the Wix site closes, images still hosted there could disappear.
The shop
Wix Stores exports products as CSV, which WooCommerce can import once the columns are mapped (variants, prices, stock). Customers and orders do not follow as easily: see our article on e-commerce data migration.
Wix URLs and their redirects
Wix imposes its address structure: /post/post-title for the blog, /product-page/product-name for the shop, pages at the root. WordPress has another one: almost every URL changes, and each must be redirected with a 301 to its new page. A generic rule can handle the blog if post slugs are kept identical; the rest is redirected address by address.
The redirects are set on the new server (.htaccess file or redirect plugin, see redirects in WordPress): the ones you had created in Wix disappear with the site.
Keeping the domain name
A domain bought at Wix can be kept: transfer it to another registrar, or change its DNS to point it to the new hosting. Keeping the same domain avoids adding a domain migration to the platform migration. If the Wix site was served over HTTPS, the new one must be too from the switch.
The common steps
For the rest, the migration follows the steps of any CMS change: build the site on a staging server, prepare the redirect plan, switch, check. They are described in the CMS change procedure.
Are all your Wix URLs changing? Swan matches each old URL with its WordPress page, you validate, then it checks the redirects.
