How To Migrate A Website From Squarespace To WordPress

Having a strong online presence with a well functioning WordPress website and good UX, is more important than ever. Whether running a business, displaying your creative work, or sharing your thoughts, your website is your digital front door. It’s constantly available to view globally, helping you connect with people no matter where they are.

With its straightforward tools and beautiful designs, Squarespace has made it easy for many to get started. However, it does have its limitations, especially when it comes to personalizing your site. If you add special features or drastically change the site’s design, Squarespace may be restrictive. That’s where WordPress comes in.

Switching to WordPress can open up possibilities, offering you the flexibility and scalability that Squarespace lacks. WordPress lets you tweak nearly every part of your site and supports numerous themes and plugins. This means you can craft a unique site that does exactly what you need to do, and can grow and change with your needs. Whether you want to create an online store, special social media feeds, or have more control over how your site looks and works, WordPress can handle it.

This tutorial shows you how to transfer Squarespace to WordPress, ensuring you can maximize your website’s potential with greater control and scalability. We guide you through each step of the migration process, from setting up your WordPress environment and importing your content to customizing your site with themes and plugins that fit your needs.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Because there is no one-click backup option, you have to back up all your Squarespace content, including text, images, and videos,
• Select a web hosting provider that fits your budget and meets your speed, uptime, and security requirements.
• Export your content from Squarespace and import it into WordPress using the WordPress Importer, making manual adjustments for content types that aren’t automatically transferred.
• Use Auto Upload Images to transfer and correctly link images in WordPress, as they may not automatically move with the rest of your content.
• Redirect your existing domain to your new WordPress host by updating the DNS settings or transferring your domain if necessary.
• Adjust your WordPress permalink settings to match the URL structure used by Squarespace to preserve SEO benefits and ease of user navigation.
• Select a WordPress theme that reflects your brand and install essential plugins to enhance functionality and security.
• Thoroughly test your new site to ensure everything works correctly, checking for broken links, ensuring images display correctly, and verifying that all content appears as expected.

Pre-Migration Steps

Before you start moving your website from Squarespace to WordPress, there are a few important steps to ensure everything goes smoothly. Here’s what you need to do:

Back up Your Squarespace Site

Firstly, you must back up your Squarespace site. This is like making a copy of everything you have, just in case you need to refer to it or something goes wrong during the migration.

Squarespace does not provide a one-click backup option, so you must manually save your pages, blogs, and media files. Ensure you save all your texts and images somewhere safe, like on your computer or an external hard drive.

Choose a Web Hosting Provider

Next, find a new home for your website; this means choosing a web hosting provider for your WordPress site. A web host is a company that stores your site’s files and makes them available on the internet. When picking a web host, consider the following:

• Budget: How much are you willing to spend? There are many options, from budget-friendly to premium services.
• Loading Time: Your website’s loading speed is important. A faster website provides a better experience for your visitors and helps with SEO.
• Server Uptime: Uptime refers to how long the server is running. Look for a host that delivers at least 99.9% uptime so your website will almost always be available and accessible to visitors.
• Security: Security is essential. Ensure your WordPress hosting provider offers strong security measures to protect your site from hackers and malware.

Refer to some tips for choosing your hosting provider at the following link:

– Choosing A WordPress Hosting Provider: Factors To Consider

Once you have chosen a provider, sign up with your chosen hosting plan to set up your hosting environment. If you sign up for Hosted®’s WordPress Hosting, you can host 2 to 12 websites depending on your plan choice.

Then, decide what to do with your domain name. If you don’t have one, register a new domain name.

If you already have a domain name with Squarespace, transfer it to your new host so all your website material is in one place, or keep it registered with Squarespace and point it to your new WordPress site. To simplify matters, we’ve covered both approaches separately in the following two tutorials:

– How to Transfer a Domain Name

– Point External Domain Name to Hosted®’s WordPress Hosting Server

The above approach is effective only if you use a custom domain name, as you cannot redirect a built-in Squarespace subdomain to another website or server.

IMPORTANT:

Whether you transfer a domain or go through domain pointing steps, we recommend doing this after Squarespace to WordPress migration.

Install WordPress

Once you’ve chosen your web hosting provider and purchased a hosting plan, install WordPress. Many hosts, including Hosted®, offer easy, one-click installations of WordPress from their control panels. This means you can set up WordPress without understanding the technical details.

If you’re a Hosted® customer, refer to the following detailed tutorials to install WordPress:

– Use Hosted’s Auto-installer to Install WordPress

– Install WordPress Manually

Once installed, WordPress will be the foundation on which you’ll build your new website, offering you extensive customization options and control over your site’s design and functionality.

Now, let’s get ready to switch and unlock new possibilities for your website.

How to Convert Squarespace to WordPress

Once you’ve completed the pre-migration preparations, follow these steps to successfully transfer Squarespace content to WordPress:

1. Export content from Squarespace.
2. Import the content into your WordPress site.
3. Transfer images to WordPress.
4. Configure permalinks to maintain URL structure.
5. Complete the WordPress setup.

Export Squarespace Content

Squarespace allows you to export most of your basic content, like your blog posts, pages, and certain media files, but it has some limitations. For example, product pages, album pages and event pages won’t export automatically.

Also, any content stored in Squarespace blocks, like audio files and video, may need to be handled separately. Knowing these limitations helps you plan how to handle different types of content.

Export Squarespace Website Content

Click Settings.

Click Website from the left-hand menu, then click Import & Export Content.

Next, click Export.

Choose WordPress. Even if you don’t plan to import your content into a WordPress site, select WordPress as the export will only be available in WordPress format. However, importing to WordPress is not obligatory.

If your site includes several blog pages, click Select primary blog. You can only export one blog page at a time. Choose your primary blog from the drop-down menu and click Export.

The export process can take a few minutes, depending on how much content you have.

Once the export is done, you’ll see Download. Click this to save the .xml file to your computer or select Delete to remove the exported data.

Remember: only specific content types will be transferred. Here’s what the XML file will include:

• Layout pages
• Project pages
• One blog along with its posts
• Gallery pages
• Blog comments
• Image blocks (Only compatible with WordPress.com)
• Text blocks.

Your XML file will not include:

• Folders
• Product pages
• Index pages
• Album pages
• Event pages
• Cover pages
• Audio blocks
• Additional blogs or their posts
• Product blocks
• Video blocks
• Drafts.

Export Products

If you have products, these also won’t be included in the exported XML file; however, you can export them separately as a .csv file. While this does not guarantee seamless import into a different website platform, it ensures you have the raw data available.

To export products into a .csv file, navigate to Products & Services → Products on your dashboard and click Export All in the upper right-hand corner. This will export all products into a .csv file. However, if you want to export specific products, mark them and click Export in the bottom-right corner.

Download Media Files from Squarespace

On the Squarespace dashboard, go to Asset → Files. Select each media file you wish to save. Click the three-dot menu to open File Details.

Then, right-click and choose Save image as to download the files one at a time. Squarespace does not offer a feature to download all media files simultaneously in bulk.

Export Contacts

Similarly, to export your potential audience, subscribers, repeat customers, and form submitters, head to Contacts → Lists & Segments, click on the three-dot menu, and then click Export to save them on your computer.

Copy HTML/CSS Code Manually

Note down any custom CSS or HTML you’ve added to your site, as you must manually add these to your new WordPress site. For complex features like forms or unique customizations, you may need to find WordPress plugins replicating this functionality.

Lastly, capture full-page screenshots of each page on your website (excluding blog posts, as this can be excessively time-consuming). These images will serve as a visual reference should you need to reconstruct your site. To do this, use the Full Page Screen Capture extension in the Chrome web store.

Import Content into WordPress

After you’ve packed up your content from Squarespace, it’s time to bring over the content you exported from Squarespace. To do that, we use WordPress’ built-in feature, the WordPress Importer, which makes this easy. Here’s how to use it:

Log into your WordPress Dashboard. Go to Tools and then click Import. Find WordPress and click Install Now.

Once it’s installed, click Run Importer.

Click Choose File to upload the XML file you downloaded from Squarespace. Then, click Upload file and import. The importer will read the file and prepare to import your content.

You may be asked to assign authors to the posts. You can create new user accounts or assign all posts to your admin account (for this tutorial example, we assign all posts to admin).

You will also have the option to import attachments, such as images and other media files. Ensure you check the box that allows you to import file attachments. This ensures all the images and media from Squarespace are carried over to WordPress.

Then, click Submit.

As the import happens, check posts and media are correctly assigned to the right user or admin account. After the import, go to your new WordPress site to ensure everything looks right.

Remember, if the import times out or generates an error, deselect the Download file and import file attachments checkbox. When this option is enabled, your Squarespace server setup and website size can delay completion of the import.

Import Images to WordPress Site

Once you’ve moved your text and other content into your new WordPress site, the next step is to ensure all your images are properly transferred. Remember: moving these from Squarespace to WordPress can sometimes be tricky.

When you import your content from Squarespace to WordPress using the XML file, not all images may automatically transfer. This happens because the XML file doesn’t store images themselves, only the links to where those images are stored on Squarespace’s servers.

Therefore, if the links don’t update correctly or Squarespace blocks the images from being accessed by WordPress, these images won’t show on your new site.

Thankfully, you can use plugins to help move your images more easily. Plugins are helpful tools that take care of complex tasks for you. To transfer images, use an effective plugin such as Auto Upload Images.

This plugin streamlines importing images by locating image URLs in your previous Squarespace blog posts and automatically uploading them to your WordPress Media Library. It further updates old image URLs to new ones on your server.

Here’s how to use it:

First, install and activate your plugin from your WordPress dashboard. To do that, go to Plugins → Add New Plugin and search for Auto Upload Images. Next, click Install Now.

Then, click Activate.

Once activated, the plugin starts working in the background. All you need to do is to refresh all your posts that contain images by using the Bulk actions feature. Here’s how:

Go to Posts in your dashboard, then click Screen Options at the top. A new menu will display, where you’ll find a field called Number of items per page. Enter 999 as the value and click Apply.

Then, select those posts you wish to update, choose Edit from the Bulk actions drop-down menu, then click Apply next to it.

In the window that appears, leave the settings unchanged and click Update.

With these steps, images from Squarespace will be automatically uploaded and updated in your WordPress posts.

IMPORTANT:

Go through the domain pointing process or transfer it to your WordPress site. How to do this? We’ve already discussed this – refer to the section entitled Choose a Web Hosting Provider above in this tutorial to see how to do it.

Configure Permalinks

Once your domain points to your new WordPress site, the next essential step is to set up your permalinks. They help people find your content easily and play an important role in how search engines rank your site.

To keep your SEO benefits and ensure old users can still find what they’re looking for on your new site, it’s important to keep your URL structure as it was on Squarespace. To do that, you should customize the permalink structure in WordPress. Here’s how:

Go to your WordPress dashboard. Navigate to Setting → Permalinks. Choose a URL structure that closely matches your old Squarespace URLs. For most sites, selecting Post name in permalink settings does the job because it makes URLs look clean and simple – much like Squarespace.

Once done, don’t forget to click Save Changes to save your settings.

Also, ensure all your old URLs link to the correct pages on your new site to avoid 404 errors; this happens when users click on a link that no longer exists. Remember, 404 errors can hurt your site’s user experience and SEO.

After setting your permalink structure, consider using a redirect plugin to handle any exceptions where the new WordPress structure doesn’t match perfectly. Plugins like Redirection help manage these effectively by directing old URLs to new ones.

To see how to set up redirects, check out the following tutorial:

– 4 Ways to Setup Redirects in WordPress (Including Redirection Plugin)

Finalize WordPress Setup

With your permalinks configured, the last step in your Squarespace to WordPress migration journey is to finalize your WordPress setup by choosing the right theme and installing essential plugins. Refer to the following tutorial to choose the best theme for your website:

– How to Choose a WordPress Theme: A Beginner’s Guide

Once you’ve chosen a theme, install it by going to Appearance → Themes → Add New Theme. Upload the theme if you’ve purchased from a third party or select a free theme.

Now, ensure you install essential plugins for functionality enhancement. Plugins extend the features of your WordPress site. Whether you need SEO tools, security enhancements, or social media features, there’s almost certainly a plugin for whatever you need.

To install any plugin, go to Plugins → Add New Plugin and search for the plugin you need. Then, install and activate the plugin.

 Essential plugins to consider include:

• WordPress SEO Plugins: These plugins enhance your site’s visibility and performance in search engine results. They help optimize content with keywords, generate sitemaps, and improve meta tags, ensuring your site meets the best SEO practices.
• Security Plugins: These protect your website from threats, such as hacking, brute force attacks, and malware. They often include firewalls, security scanning, and real-time monitoring to keep your site safe from vulnerabilities.
• Caching Plugins: These plugins improve your WordPress site’s speed and performance by storing the latest version of your pages in a cache. When users visit your site, pages load faster because the server can provide the cached version instead of reloading the whole web page from scratch each time.

IMPORTANT:

Ensure you install only one plugin for each specific function. Overloading your website with too many plugins can exhaust system resources. Additionally, plugins that serve similar purposes can interfere with each other, potentially causing errors on your website.

With these steps complete, your WordPress site is now fully set up and ready to go live, marking the successful end of your migration from Squarespace.

FAQS

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