How to Migrate Joomla to WordPress
This tutorial will show you how to migrate a Joomla site to WordPress.
We’re going to do this with an out-of-the-box Joomla site with demo content and a brand-new WordPress site.
There are two things to note before we start:
- This will move all of your Joomla articles and convert them into WordPress posts. However, it won’t move any components, templates, modules or plugins. To achieve similar functionality with your WordPress site, use WordPress plugins.
- Both the Joomla and WordPress sites need to be on the same database server. This won’t migrate sites if they are hosted separately.
Before you start
To be able to follow instructions in this tutorial, you need your Joomla site database name, database username, database user password and database prefix. Contact your hosting support if you need help to get these details. Let’s get started.
Delete all WordPress content
- Go to the “Posts” tab.
- Select the “Title” checkbox [1]
- Select the “Move to Trush” option from the “Bulk Actions” box [2]
- Click on the “Apply” button [3] to delete all the existing posts:
- Go to the “Pages” tab and delete all the existing pages:
Install FG Joomla to WordPress plugin
- Go to the Plugins tab [1] and click on the “Add New” button [2]:
- In the search box, type in “fg joomla” instead of the “Search plugins…”:
- You will see the “FG Joomla to WordPress” plugin listed:
- Install this plugin by clicking on the “Install Now” button.
- Activate this plugin by clicking on the “Activate” button:
You are now almost ready to migrate your Joomla! website to WordPress. You just need to tell the “FG Joomla to WordPress” plugin what database to migrate. Let’s do just that.
Configure “FG Joomla to WordPress” plugin
- Go to your “Plugins” tab.
- Locate the newly installed “FG Joomla to WordPress” plugin [1]
- Click on the “Import” link [2]:
- You will now see the “Import Joomla FG” page [1].
- Scroll down to the “Joomla website parameters” section [2]:
- Enter your Joomla site URL into the “URL of the live Joomla web site” text field:
- Enter your Joomla site database details into the fields in the “Joomla database parameters” and click on the “Test the database connection” button:
- Everything being well, you will see “Connection successful” message:
You are just one click from finishing.
- Go to your WordPress blog front page. Obviously, since there is no content in it, you should see “Nothing found” and no categories listed:
- Return to your WordPress dashboard and click on the “Start / Resume the import” button:
- In a few seconds, you should see the green progress bar:
Job done! Now go to your WordPress blog front page once again. You will now see your posts with articles imported from your Joomla site as well as imported categories:
Congratulations! You just learned how to migrate your Joomla site to WordPress.
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Why would you want to move from Joomla to Word Press?
There are some valid reasons, I can also think of some valid reasons to move from WP to Joomla.
Why Joomla to WP? Here are two ideas:
1) The client / user might just be more comfortable using WP or might just not know Joomla at all
2) WP does have better features in some areas such as multisites
WP is much easier to maintain, which means a lower total cost of ownership. All additions and updates to its core and plugins are pushed to the administrators on the backend for one-click upgrades.
WP 3.0+ beats Joomla with its core multisite capability, SEO readiness, new menu and custom content type capabilities, its superior themes, its child theme system, post version control, category multimapping, core tagging and comments, URL aliasing and search that works.
If you can do it in WP, you should because it will be simpler and less onerous to maintain. The only reason for using Joomla now is that Drupal is still harder for people to learn and operate. If you need complex, specialized applications (even something as simple as a calendar or forum) WP is not there yet, but Joomla has many options.
Hi Dan,
We appreciate your thoughtful comments! It’s good to get some discussion like this! 🙂
Yes, each of CMSs have their own strengths and weaknesses. By far the biggest advantage of WP is its ease of use which is manifested through out the CMS, while Joomla’s biggest strength is it’s 3rd party extensions.
Kind regards,
Nick
this is the TRUE people !
thx Dan
This worked so well! Thank you so much!
I built a couple of sites in Joomla (which I love and am more familiar with), but when I wanted to turn them over to others to run, they didn’t know how to use Joomla and so migrating them using these instructions worked great.
I really appreciate the detailed article. You guys are the best!
🙂 Dana
You’re very welcome, Dana! 🙂
Kind regards,
Nick
Just a note that you have to press, or at least I had to, the update options button after inserting my info. Otherwise you receive an error.
Hi Richard,
Yes, that’s definitely a must.
Kind regards,
Nick
how do you get the images to resolve that are in the original articles? i successfully migrated the articles from joomla to WP but none of the images show up no matter where i put the images folder. the posts reference images using the code: src=”/images/stories/[filename]” any suggestions where to put my image folder on the wordpress site?
Hi Jim,
Sorry for the delay in responding. If you have any more questions, feel free to ask in the support forum where we answer everything within a day. It’s tough keeping track of all the blog comments as we have hundreds of blog posts.
Kind regards,
Nick
where’s the link of support forum?
Hi wpro – the forum is at [url=http://ostraining.com/forum]http://ostraining.com/forum[/url] and is available to our site’s members.
Nicely done! I love this plugin. Thanks for sharing.
You’re welcome, Pelin! 🙂
Will the Joomla site remain intact?
Hi Diane,
Yes, the Joomla site will remain intact.
Sorry for the delay in responding. If you have any more questions, feel free to ask in the support forum where we answer everything within a day. It’s tough keeping track of all the blog comments as we have hundreds of blog posts.
Kind regards,
Nick
Hi
I assume the method above does not import the joomla design into wordpress?
I have a joomla theme template and would like to have the template for a new wordpress installation.
is there a relatively easy way i can do this so my wordpress site design has the joomla look and design
many thanks
Steve
Hi Steve,
Correct, this will move all of your Joomla articles and convert them into WordPress posts. However, it won’t move any components, templates (design), modules or plugins. Those will need to be re-created on your WordPress site.
You should check with your template provider as many that create Joomla templates also have a WordPress theme with the same design.
Kind regards,
Nick
Hi sir , i have install the Joomla To WordPress Migrator plugin in site , i want to migrate the joomla site( which is using joomfish) which is built in 5 more language except the English , so how other language content migrate into wordpress.
if some one have any idea . how to do that ?
share with me ..
thanks
Sorry for the delay in responding. If you have any support questions, feel free to ask in the support forum where we answer everything within a day. It’s tough keeping track of all the blog comments as we have hundreds of blog posts.
Kind regards,
Nick
hi, great tutorial! but my problem lies with No 2 requirement, how do i move posts in joomla hosted from another site into a wordpress site hosted in a different server. Do i save the database from the joomla site and import it to the new wordpress? any help would be appreciated…
Sorry for the delay in responding. If you have any support questions, feel free to ask in the support forum where we answer everything within a day. It’s tough keeping track of all the blog comments as we have hundreds of blog posts.
Kind regards,
Nick
I have a slightly different problem. I need to migrate only my blog posts from joomla to wordpress. I have rewritten the other content for the new wordpress site. Im using MyBlog component for Joomla. Is there a way to do this still using Mambots?
Sorry for the delay in responding. If you have any support questions, feel free to ask in the support forum where we answer everything within a day. It’s tough keeping track of all the blog comments as we have hundreds of blog posts.
Kind regards,
Nick
Thanks Steve!
I’m sorry but this plugin hasn’t satisfied me, do you know how many problems and derelictions you are faced with these plugins: there isn’t comment, tag and image migration, problems with other languages, limited features, no filter of post content, it migrates ton of unnecessary codes, problem with db connection (if J and WP are in diff server), no good support, no image source url correction, and other lots of things. I’d prefer to use some prof services to do it with small cost.
Sorry for the delay in responding. If you have any support questions, feel free to ask in the support forum where we answer everything within a day. It’s tough keeping track of all the blog comments as we have hundreds of blog posts.
Kind regards,
Nick
i tries to migrate using Vertrigo, both project on same server, but i m facing this error………any suggestion plz ???
=========================================
Unknown column ‘section’ in ‘where clause’
Warning: mysql_fetch_array(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in D:\majid-work\wordpress\wp-content\plugins\joomla-to-wordpress-migrator\joomla2wp-mig.php on line 609
Warning: mysql_free_result(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in D:\majid-work\wordpress\wp-content\plugins\joomla-to-wordpress-migrator\joomla2wp-mig.php on line 616
Found 0 Categories…
User Migration
migrate user: admin —- d
Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in D:\majid-work\wordpress\wp-content\plugins\joomla-to-wordpress-migrator\joomla2wp-mig.php on line 578
Sorry for the delay in responding. If you have any support questions, feel free to ask in the support forum where we answer everything within a day. It’s tough keeping track of all the blog comments as we have hundreds of blog posts.
Kind regards,
Nick
Will the plugin transfer all the comments images and videos as well?
Hi and welcome, Amnuai!
Sorry for the inconvenience, but if you’re a student at OSTraining, could you copy and paste this into the support forum so one of our support techs can look into it for you?
Please see the support FAQ for more information:
[url=http://www.ostraining.com/support-faq/]http://www.ostraining.com/s…[/url]
Kind regards,
Nick
Will this plugin move all the comments, images and videos as well from Joomla to WP?
Hi and welcome, Amnuai!
Sorry for the inconvenience, but if you’re a student at OSTraining, could you copy and paste this into the support forum so one of our support techs can look into it for you?
Please see the support FAQ for more information:
[url=http://www.ostraining.com/support-faq/]http://www.ostraining.com/s…[/url]
Kind regards,
Nick
hi
I can migrate from joomla to wordpress successfully
but i have a problem
my articles ,users and my categories transfered very well but its show ?????????? means show (?).
my article language is persian-arabic and I set utf8 in setting but not working.
please help me to solve this problem
Thanks A lot
Hi and welcome, Masoudline!
Sorry for the inconvenience, but if you’re a student at OSTraining, could you copy and paste this into the support forum so one of our support techs can look into it for you? All you have to do is log in at [url=http://www.ostraining.com]www.ostraining.com[/url] and click on Support Forum in the main menu.
Please see the support FAQ for more information:
[url=http://www.ostraining.com/support-faq/]http://www.ostraining.com/s…[/url]
Kind regards,
Nick
Just wanted to say thank you! This post saved me hours of work 🙂
You’re welcome, Tee! I’m glad we could help 🙂
You should consider becoming a student as you’ll learn a lot more and save your days/weeks of work 🙂
Kind regards,
Nick
There are several other Joomla migration plugins for WP. Some do not require the WP destination to be empty of categories and articles. Do you know if they are reliable?
Hi Dan,
Sorry, I haven’t used them. A good way to get an idea is to check out their support forum (if they have one) and also their reviews at [url=http://wordpress.org]wordpress.org[/url]
Kind regards,
Nick
I have made my website in joomla using easyblog so I have no joomla articles, just easyblog articles. However, I’d like to migrate over to wordpress. Do you know if I can do this? Does it migrate my comments across too?
Hi Amy,
Unfortunately, this won’t for easyblog. You’d need a custom script to be able to migrate easy blog, since there isn’t one available (as far as I’m aware).
Kind regards,
Nick
Wow… this is great..
I have been looking for this for months… we are now hand moving over a 1500 post website. Eeek.
Great work
Thanks Matt! We’re glad we could help. Good luck moving over the site. Hope it all goes well for you 🙂
Kind regards,
Nick
Nice plugin, but isnt working for me :/
I am using wamp local server,settings are localhost, root, without password, name of the db is correct (i use both joomla and wp correctly). But I get this message “MySQL Connection and Table Data not complete !!!. ”
Joomla version is 1.5.22 and wp is 3.3.1
Any advice?
Hi and welcome, Dusan!
We would love to help you out with this, however it would require some addition information to narrow down the issue. If you are a student at [url=http://ostraining.com]ostraining.com[/url], please log into the support forum ([url=http://www.ostraining.com/support-forum/)]http://www.ostraining.com/s…[/url] and post the question in there, so that one of our support techs can look into it for you. If you’re not a student, I hope you’ll consider becoming one, so that we can give you the attention you deserve. You can find out more about our online class at [url=http://www.ostraining.com/online]www.ostraining.com/online[/url]
Kind regards,
Nick
Hi All, I just did a conversion from Joomla to WP using the plugin. I don’t know if I missed something or did something wrong. Things seemed to be successful, but all I’ve got now are categories (I don’t know if they’re called pages in Joomla) but I wanted the Joomla pages to show up as pages in WP.
I tried the “single server” option and saved settings but when I went to migrate I got the “MySQL Connection and Table Data not complete” error.
At first I thought maybe it was because I couldn’t remove the Uncategorized category but still got it after deleting it through phpMyAdmin, so I tried the “separate servers” option. This eventually worked.
However, I only have categories in WP now and now pages. Did I do something wrong?
it is too risky. you may end up with more problems like . error pages, all your link will need to be re index by search engines, problem with your images and you loose a lot of traffics atleast for about a month before you regain balance with hardworking, you can even loose links that are not to your homepage and you will have lower search rankings.
It didn’t work. Does it migrate 2.5? Is there a detailed explanation on what to put in the set up boxes? I’m as dumb as a rock, and joomla is way too hard.
Does this leave the original Joomla database intact, or does it convert the DB completely?
Thanks for the detailed article. But plugin doest work for my Joomla 2.5 🙁
Will the plugin delete the articles in the original Joomla site, or simply migrate them to the new WordPress site? I will backup the original Joomla DB, but will be building the WP site in a sub-directory on the same domain and would like to preserve the original just in case…
They do look amazing.
Hi, can you suggest some way to migrate Users(Id/Name & Passwords), Products and orders from joomla to wordpress?
Hi I want to migrate my joomla site into wordpress. I have seen your post. I have one doubt. how to create a wordpress website with same name as my live joomla site and maintain two sites live up to migration.