Despite being the most popular CMS in the world, WordPress isn’t the only option people have when it comes to building and maintaining websites. Joomla is the second largest CMS by market share, the biggest competitor to WordPress, and an all-around great piece of open source software.
Still, the market wouldn’t be so divided if it weren’t for some clear advantages of using WordPress over any other content management system. This is the reason why people migrate Squarespace websites or Wix websites to WordPress. This is why you should consider porting your Joomla website to WordPress as well.
If it came for you then you are in the right place. In this article, we will show you:
Simply saying that people can switch from Joomla to WordPress because WordPress is better does none of the CMS’s justice, as the much larger user base suggests. There are many things that make Joomla a good choice for a website. For example, the extension system provides equivalents of WordPress plugins, widgets, and even themes. Joomla also has some great user management options.
However, Joomla also has a slightly steeper learning curve. It doesn’t require extremely difficult knowledge or skills, so it’s still achievable. It’s just that once you get close to it, you’ll have to spend plenty of time navigating through all the options and processes. This makes WordPress an easier to use solution.
But Joomla’s steeper learning curve isn’t the only thing that will make you switch to WordPress. No matter how great Joomla’s extensions are, they cannot be compared to all the plugins and themes built for WordPress.
WordPress has all these ways of allowing users to build their websites because of its biggest asset and this is the great community for WordPress that builds and maintains all these assets. Some do this for free and create free themes and plugins. Others do this for business and create premium WordPress themes and plugins.
Either way, the biggest advantage of WordPress over Joomla and any other CMS is the people who use it and create it for it. Moving to WordPress means taking advantage of the larger and more vibrant community, and that means a lot.
If you are sure that you want to migrate your website from Joomla to WordPress, the first thing you should do is create a WordPress website. This means finding a web host, choosing a new domain name, and installing WordPress.
You may already have a web host and a domain name that you don’t want to change. You will still need to install WordPress, and you will also need to request a temporary domain name to use from your server during the migration.
While you’re here, you can look for a few plugins to help your website perform better. You can also check out some WordPress themes to give your website a specific look. You can leave these two steps for later because for now you will only need a working WordPress website.
There are several ways to migrate a Joomla website to WordPress. You can do this manually and copy your content piece by piece from one website to another. It’s a slow process, but it will get the job done eventually. You can also pay for a service to handle the migration for you.
The middle ground between the two lets you use a plugin. Widely used for this job FG Joomla to WordPress – a free migration plugin with a solid user rating that will work well even with large migrations. Since it’s a free plugin, you’ll need the premium version to get the most out of it and do things like move authors and menus. But if you need to migrate content, the free version should be fine.
So, from the dashboard of your WordPress website, navigate to: Plugins > Add NewSearch for FG Joomla to WordPress and then install and activate the plugin.
You will need to do two things before continuing. First, if you plan to use the URL forwarding option available in the Premium version of the plugin, you need to navigate to: Settings > Permalinks and change the URL structure from default to something else. then go Setting > Media and adjust image dimensions; The importer tool uses these settings to resize your images.
When this is done, navigate to: Tools > Import, find Joomla (FG) in the list and click “run importer”. You can also go Plugins > Installed PluginsFind the plugin from the list and click “import”. Either way, you will arrive at the importer tool.
The first option you will see allows you to offload the content of your WordPress website. If you’re performing the migration on a clean WordPress install, you don’t need to do this. This option is useful if you’ve already done an import and want to give it another try.
The next set of options are the Joomla website parameters. In this section you will need to provide a URL to your Joomla website and this should be live in the process. Next, choose how you want to download media from your Joomla website and test the media link between the old site and the new site.
Joomla database parameters is where you enter your Joomla website’s database parameters accordingly. If you are not sure where they are go to the backend of your Joomla website, System > Global Configuration > Serverand find anything you need under Database Settings.
You must enter the appropriate information into the Joomla importer on your website backend. After doing this you can test the database connection, At which point you will receive information about the number of articles the plugin has found in your Joomla website database.
Next, you’ll set the plugin’s behaviors. You’ll be able to tell him what to do with intro text, archived posts, archived and unpublished categories, media and meta keywords. Premium users will have additional options at their disposal.
Once you have selected all the settings you want to select, save them and you will be ready to start the import. Hit the big blue button that says “Start/Resume Import” and watch the magic happen.
Once the import is finished, feel free to check if all your media files landed where they need to be. The plugin also helps you to change the internal links which allows you to do it with the push of a button.
Once this is complete, there is little left to do except make sure your domain is pointing to your new website. If you’re not sure how to do this on your own, ask your website hosting provider to handle it for you. And you’re done with that!
Let’s wrap it up!
Joomla is a great platform that is an invaluable alternative to WordPress. The opposite is also true – people who use Joomla may decide to switch to WordPress. Website migration can be tedious if you do it manually. With a little help from FG Joomla to WordPress plugin, you can move your website in record time without breaking a sweat.
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