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Migrating to a new CMS is not an easy job; it can be quite complex and tedious. It is often considered similar to shifting to a new house. Just as people grumble at the idea of packing and transporting their whole belongings in trucks to the new location and spend a lot of time arranging them, similarly moving to a new CMS may appear quite intimidating to some people, and they shy away from making the transformation. However, if you look at the benefits that you get by the move, the initial troubles and difficulties would be dwarfed. Joomla to WordPress migration brings in many benefits and advantages in terms of improved functionalities and a completely new look for your website. These are reasons enough to make the move, so we have put together a checklist to ensure that your migration to a new WordPress is smooth.

Make a Migration Timeframe

To make the migration process smooth and under control, you need to be organized, and for that, you have to set a time limit for the whole process. You have to make a detailed plan in advance and set deadlines for completing the task. You also need to provision for some extra time that you might need to wrap up everything.

Review, Clean Up, and Backup Content on Joomla

So, once you are ready to start the migration process, the first you need to do is get rid of the junk files and some inventory check. Review your website to remove all the content that is not worth porting over to the new site. Make sure that all the content is in their correct places, and that categories and tags are set right. Also, evaluate the volume of content that needs to be ported, such as the number of articles, users, etc.

Install and Configure the New WordPress

This part is pretty straight forward. You will have to set up your WordPress URL structure so that it remains SEO friendly. Your migrated URL must look good after the switch.

Research Migration Tools

Unless there is a lot of content, migrating manually could be a good idea by systematically copy-pasting the content. Otherwise, if the volume of content is high and you are short on time, you can think about hiring a WordPress web development professional or use a migration tool. Hiring a professional developer saves a lot of time as they utilize automated processes for the conversion. Depending on the size of the website, the migration can be completed in a few minutes to a few hours. Additionally, no coding knowledge or other technical expertise is needed.

Content Migration

Once you have selected the migration method, it’s time to schedule a migration to begin time. And do not forget to inform all the concerned persons about it, such as your website users and visitors, and give them a tentative timeline you expect your website to be under maintenance owing to the migration. It is advised that no new content should be added during this time, or else it might get lost. Start the migration when everything is set.

Check the Migrated Content

After all your Joomla content has been transferred to the new WordPress platform, you need to check the website to see if everything is in the right place. If anything is not in the order you should straight away proceed to rectify the flaws.

Design Adjustment

After the content transfer has been done, you should move on to work on the design appearance. You might have to do some theme adjustment to make it look similar to what it did on Joomla. If you want to have a new fresh look for your website, installing a new theme is what would be required.

Add Functionality

Similar to what you did with the appearance of your website if you want any particular functionality you have to scan the WordPress plugin directory. With a wide variety of plugins available in the inbuilt directory, you are likely to find a good replacement to your Joomla modules and even find new plugins to get additional functionality.

Setting Up 301 Redirects

It is very important to maintain your previous ranking to avoid losing visitors. To preserve your previous ranking you will need to set up permanent redirects from your previous URL to the new one. This needs to be done because there is every chance that even if you are using the same domain name, the link structure might change. You will lose visitors as they would not know that you have moved to a new platform.

Now that everything is done for Joomla to WordPress transition, you should check every aspect of your website to make sure that everything is functioning properly. Check that every link is live and you are all set to be up and running.