Hello and welcome to WPBeginner. In this
video we'll cover how to transfer from a
Weebly site to a WordPress site and
we'll cover it step by step so you can
get up and running quickly. If you're
like most people you first created your
site on Weebly because a friend told you
to do it and it was fast to set up but
now you want to customize some things
and you want to have more control over
your site. After doing some research
maybe you realize that moving it to
WordPress is your best option but now
you don't know how to migrate it. Well
don't worry in this video I'll walk you
through the whole process of migrating
your Weebly site to your own WordPress
site and we'll cover it step by step. In
fact these are the steps we'll be
covering we'll set up your hosting
account, you'll get started with a domain
name or you''llr move your domain name,
you'll install WordPress then comes the
big thing where we'll move your content
from the Weebly to WordPress site we'll
test the migration and see if there are
any fixes that we need to worry about
and then we'll choose a new theme for
your site. So if you're ready let's get
started the first two steps we'll cover
are actually going to be together and
that's the setting up the hosting and
getting the domain name The hosting
account is what every website owner
needs to have and it's basically your
house on the web it houses all of your
website files all the images that you
have your on your site in everything and
this is where that's all kept so you'll
need to have a hosting no matter what
you do and along with that you want a
domain name that is the web address that
somebody types in when they want to go
to your website now with Weebly you may
have had something like my site dot weebly
dot com and if you did then setting up a new
domain name will be easy. If you already
have a domain name then this part will
be a little bit different for you now at
WPBeginner we recommend using Bluehost
as your hosting provider they have great
customer support, they are one of the
oldest most established hosting
companies out there, they're officially
recommended by the WordPress.org
organization and WPBeginner users can
get sixty percent off and a free domain
by using our discount code.
To get that discount just go to www
wpbeginner.com forward slash reefer
forward slash bluehost hit enter and it
will take you to that page we also have
a link below that you can use as well.
From here just click on the big green
get started button and it will take you
to the select your plan page. You can
choose your plan here the biggest
difference between these two is with
this one it's very basic and you're only
allowed one website whereas with this
one if you have web addresses or
multiple websites that you want to set
up then this might be the best one for
you. After you've chosen which fed up you
want go ahead and sign up with a new
domain name that you want since it comes
free and click Next. From here you want
to go ahead and create your account by
filling in all of this information
and then down here you want to verify the
package information I would say that
your domain privacy you don't need we
normally just turn that off, things like
backup site in site locker, there are a
lot of great plugins and features
available within WordPress so you don't
need that either once you fill out all
the information you see the amount
that's being discounted now just fill in
your payment information and you'll have
your hosting account set up. Now that we've
signed up we get a congratulations
screen and then we can click to the next
screen and this is where we'll want to
create our password. This password we'll
use to manage our hosting account once
we've created our password we're now
logged into our hosting account
dashboard so let's take a look quick look
at where we've been and where we're
going. So far we successfully set up our
hosting and we've gotten our domain name
the next step we want to do is we want
to install WordPress and we'll do that
next. From our hosting account dashboard
scroll all the way down we're looking
for this button here and we want to
install WordPress. From this screen just
click install here you just want to
click check domain
and then on the next screen make sure
you've selected I've read the terms and
conditions and click install. From here
it will go through the process of
installing WordPress on your website.
It'll be just a little bit of time
you'll see a progress bar up here.
Alright, now that it's been installed you can
access your site from this, this is the
admin URL you'll want to keep that in a
safe location that's what you'll use to
log into your website so let's take a
look at it now, and you see this is just a
default landing page that has come up
with our site and you can login here so
enter your username and password and then
click login. Alright now we have our
website this is the dashboard that
you'll see when you first log into your
website and we can just say no thanks.
Bluehost has added a few extra items on
our website so we're going to go in and
do a little bit of cleanup before we
import everything so let's head over to
our plugins area the plugins are
extended functionality that you can add
to your website to make it do more for
you and this is some of the power of
having a WordPress installation but I
want to clean up some of this stuff so
I'm going to click these items and I'm
going to click bulk action drop-down
let's go ahead and deactivate these
items and once we've deactivated them I
want to go ahead and delete them as well
yeah let's go ahead and delete these
files and all the data as well.
Okay, once that's done now you see that it's
cleaned it up a little bit and now we're
just to our base WordPress dashboard.
Taking a look at our checklist we see
that in addition to setting up hosting,
getting a domain name, we've just
installed WordPress and our next step
will be to import the content from
Weebly so we'll do that next.
At WPBeginner we've created a Weebly to
WordPress export tool to help you with
the process of exporting your Weebly
site so that you can easily import it
into your WordPress site so you'll want
to head over to WeeblytoWP.com that
is where our tool is at. Fill out this
information at the top, make sure you enter
your Weebly website, make sure you put in
the (http://) HTTP colon forward slash forward
slash for this to work go ahead and put
in your name and your email address. Down
here you want to choose the format if
you have no comments and if you have no
categories then you can use RSS but if
you do have them and if you do want to
export them go ahead and use the WXR
feature. Same thing with pages if you
have say about us pages or feature pages
or service pages then make sure you click
yes for export that here once you fill
all that out go ahead and click the
green button to start the exporting
process and when it's finished you'll
see a link here where you can copy it
down to your computer and save it in a
location that will be easy to find for
the next step. Now that we finished that
process our next step is to import this
into our WordPress site. Alright our next
step in the process is to import the
information that we just exported so to
do that let's head back over to our
WordPress dashboard from the dashboard
we're going to go down to tools import
and scroll down until you find the
WordPress tool, we want to install that and we
want to go ahead and run that importer
from here we want to upload that file
that we just exported so I'll click on that,
click open upload and import, from here
you want to decide which author to
assign these to if you had any images
in Weebly that have been exported, you
want to hit download and import file
attachments so that they'll come over as
well. I'm going to click Submit
and we get a notification that
everything is done so if i go to my
posts all posts I see them here. You see
over here also all of the comments have
been imported and all of our categories
have been imported as well. Now we can
take a quick look at the front of our
site and see what it looks like, to do
that you can go hover over my site
and I'm going to right click open in new tab
to visit my site, now my Weebly site is
officially over here so there's a couple
of touchups that we'll want to do if your
site structure is important then we'll
need to set up and fix our permalinks I
click on one of the posts up here you
see that it just shows the post name
and back on my Weebly site this is the
structure it automatically does blog in
front of all of my post names so if having
that same structure is important to you
then you can fix that by going into your
dashboard go down to your settings area
permalinks
and this is the one we're using by default so
you just go to the custom structure, head
over here to where you have your post
name and add how its structured in our
case with blog. Make sure you save the
settings like I'll do here and now
if I go to my site, click on the blog post,
you see I have the same site structure as
my Weebly site the next thing we want to
do is we want to make sure that when
people type in our address that they
actually see our new WordPress site
instead of the Weebly site for these
changes we need to go ahead and go back
into our Weebly site into the dashboard
area so we can make these changes there
there's two ways to do this if you were
using a custom domain like my site.com
then you'll want to go into your domains
area edit the name servers if you're
using Bluehost like I showed you then
you can add these two as the primary and
secondary name servers for your site if
you are using a Weebly subdomain
like this then go to edit sites under
settings click on the SEO tab, scroll
down to find your header code and then
put this information in there make sure
you enter this to your actual website
name we'll have a copy of this down in
the description area as well make sure
you click Save Changes and make sure you
hit publish now if I open up a new web
browser tab and try to go to my Weebly
site you see that it's redirected to our
actual new website. Alright we've
successfully imported the content from
Weebly we've tested the migration and
now you have a WordPress site the final
step that we want to work on is choosing
a new theme and with WordPress you can
choose a theme and that handles the look
and feel of your website so we'll do
that next and that will be our final
step. As I said before a theme in
WordPress is what gives your site the
look and feel and this is the default
theme that comes with WordPress right
now for 2017
and in fact it's called the 2017 theme
and for my site I like it looks fine but
if this doesn't work for you then I want
to show you how you can install a
different theme for your site. So you
might already be logged in to your site
but just in case you can go to your
website to /admin that will take you to
your admin dashboard where you can log
in we actually want to go over to
appearance down here and we'll go to
themes and for my installation these are
all of the themes that are currently on
my website this is the one that's active
and these are available but if you want
to add a new one let's go up here to the
add new button and this is actually
pulling in all the themes that are
available from the WordPress repository
and these are free quality themes that
you can choose from you can search by a
feature, popular, the latest, you can even
have your own favorites and you can feature
filter for me I'll take a look at
the popular area and scroll through you
can take a look at whichever one you
want. You can preview it here and it will
try and give you an idea of what it will
look like I like to look at that so I'm
going to click install and you also need
to activate it. We get a note that it's
active so let's right click on this link
and open in a new window so you can see
it in action and that actually looks
pretty good I like the look of that it's
nice and clean it's really showcasing my
blog you can see our contact us page the
About Us page here and you can go back
to the home site and see the home page
again and now you've successfully applied a
theme to your site. Going back to your
dashboard you can keep looking at
different themes to apply and try out as
many as you want until you find the
perfect one just for your site. Alright now
you've successfully transferred your Weebly
to your WordPress site so let's quickly
look at all of the stuff you just did
We set up our hosting and got a
domain name, we installed WordPress,
then we exported and imported the
Weebly content, we tested our migration and
made any changes that were needed, and we
got a new theme for our site so now your
site is ready to go
and now you can work with WordPress
and customize it however you need. If you
like this video click on the like button
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