As a Squarespace user, you may have considered making the switch to WordPress at some point. Maybe you’ve outgrown your Squarespace website and need more functionality than what Squarespace offers.
Or, perhaps you’re just curious about WordPress and want to see what it’s like.
Whatever your reason for considering a switch from Squarespace to WordPress, you may be wondering if it’s possible to move your website from one platform to the other. Can you export your Squarespace website and import it into WordPress?
The short answer is yes, you can move your Squarespace website to WordPress. However, it’s not as simple as export/import. There are a few steps involved in migrating a Squarespace website to WordPress.
In this article, we’ll show you how to move your Squarespace website to WordPress step by step. We’ll also share some useful tips for making the transition smoother.
Before You Start
Before we dive into the details of how to migrate your Squarespace website to WordPress, there are a few things you need to do first:
- Back Up Your Website: This is an important step for any website migration. You never know when something could go wrong, so it’s always better to be safe than sorry. We recommend using a tool like VaultPress to create automatic real-time backups of your site.
- Export Your Content: Once you have a backup of your site, you can export your content from Squarespace. To do that, go to Settings → Advanced → Export/Import.
- Choose Your WordPress Hosting Provider: If you don’t already have WordPress hosting, now is the time to choose a provider and sign up for an account. We recommend using WP Engine because they offer managed WordPress hosting specifically designed for high-traffic websites.
- Set Up Your New WordPress Site: The last thing you need before starting your migration is a new empty WordPress site. Install WordPress on your hosting account following our beginner’s guide.
How to Move From Squarespace to WordPress (In 5 Steps)
Now that you’ve done all the prep work, it’s time to start migrating your content from Squarespace to WordPress. While there’s no built-in way to export content from one platform to the other, we can use an intermediate format like HTML or XML.
Squarespace makes it easy to export your content in HTML format. Once you have that file, you can import it into WordPress using the Import HTML Files plugin.
- (Optional) Export Your Site as an XML File: If you want, you can also export your Squarespace site as an XML file. To do that, go back to Settings → Advanced → Export/Import and choose XML instead of HTML in the Export Format dropdown menu.
- (Required) Export Your Site as an HTML File: Now that you know how to export your content from Squarespace, it’s time to generate an HTML file of your site. To do that, go back to Settings → Advanced → Export/Import and choose HTML in the Export Format dropdown menu.
- (Required) Import Your HTML File Into WordPress: Now that you have both an XML and HTML file of your site content, it’s time to import them into WordPress. First, install and activate the ImportHTML plugin.
- (Optional) Set Up Redirects From Old URLs: The last thing you need to do is set up redirects from your old Squarespace URLs to your new WordPress URLs.
That’s it! You’ve successfully migrated your site from Squarespace.
Conclusion:
While there’s no built-in way exporting content directly from one platform directly into another – it is possible migrate content indirectly using an intermediate format like HTML or XML.
