Move Your Site to WordPress
Finally ready to get in on the WordPress craze? Moving your existing site to a WordPress site isn't as hard as it seems. In fact, it's kind of easy. That's why more than 17% of the web runs on WordPress. Here's a basic guide to moving your existing site to a WordPress site.
First Things First
Have you ever moved to another place of residence? What happens during that move? You probably go through everything that you own, and you may toss out a few things that you don't need (or don't want to move) along the way. The same goes for moving a site.
Look at your current website. Are there pages that you might no longer need? Do you have some areas of your site that need to be freshen up with new content? Make note of those things, and cut all the slack from your existing site. This will make it a lot easier to migrate.
Moving It All In One Lump
Now that you've gotten rid of some of the site pages you no longer need (you did that, right?), you can move your site. The next step is to set up a WordPress site and start to move everything over to that site. You can do this a few different ways:
- Manually (only works with small sections of a site)
- With an import tool
- Through a customized setup (only recommended if you know what you are doing).
You can now add your current design to a custom WordPress theme – or, you can pick an entirely new theme and really change it up. Need to migrate forms, SEO, and other bits? Here are some tips.
Migration Tips
In order to migrate forms to WordPress, my advice is this: create a new form using a WordPress plugin. WordPress was developed to make life simpler, why complicate matters? Plus, there are lots of great WordPress form plugins to use. Contact Form 7 is a completely free plugin that you'll love – give it a shot.
If you need to migrate some SEO tactics, you should take a look at the WordPress SEO plugin – it's helpful and fast. But, I have to stress, that you should really run your site by focusing on excellent content.
Move Your Site to WordPress: Security Options
As you might have noticed lately, WordPress comes under a lot of hacker attacks. Now that you've decided to move to WordPress, you have to be very aware that you are now a potential target for attacks. So, what can you do? Turn to those reliable WordPress plugins, of course! Here are some security plugins that are entirely trusted:
- Wordfence (free)
- Better WP Security (also free)
See another plugin that looks interesting? Make sure to read reviews of that plugin first. Even plugins can be infected with all kinds of viruses and other nasty stuff, so beware!
You shouldn't have any problem migrating your existing site to a WordPress site. WordPress makes this process simple because the company wants more users (makes sense, right?). But, just in case you do have problems, make sure to ask me any questions you might have. I'll get back to you shortly!
