Joomla! migration to WordPress

Posted by Theo van der Sluijs on 20 Apr 2009 in Joomla!, Wordpress | 5 comments

Last weekend I did a Joomla! migration to WordPress. In this small post I will explain step by step what I did to get a good outcome in my WordPress.

If you want to know why I changed from joomla to wordpress just read my other post about this.

First,  make good backups of your “old” site !

Done making the backups ? No ? Make those damn backups. If something goes wrong your old joomla! site could be messed up. To proud to make backups ? Well, don’t come crying at my door when something goes wrong

So just make does damn backups !

Finished ? Okay.

I did the following:

Create a directory in your root, called : wordpress

Create a new MySQL dbase to use for the WordPress installation. (don’t use the Joomla! dbase for this)

Install a fresh clean wordpress in that dir. Don’t know how to do that ?

Go here:

The Famous 5-Minute Installation

or here:

Detailed Installation Instructions

Go to your new wordpress site

so : http://www.yourdomain.com/wordpress

Does it work ?

Great go to

http://www.yourdomain.com/wordpress/wp-admin

Just create the Categories you need (like the categories you have in Joomla!) never mind the sections, WordPress does not do sections. (thank god for that !) (tags will do everything for you.)

Now use the Joomla2Wordpress migration tool I adjusted for utf-8 joomla sites.

You can read more about this Joomla2Wordpress migration tool in another post.

Did you finish up migrating all your Joomla! posts to WordPress ?

Great…. now delete every single directory in your root, exept for

Images

WordPress

(if you have any other important directory don’t delete it, like Rubberdoc or a special non joomla dir)

Okay. Now, copy (NOT Move) the directory structure and files from your wordpress directory into the root of your site.

Ready ?

Go to the wp-admin inside your wordpress dir, so http://www.yourdomain.com/wordpress/wp-admin

Go to –> Settings –> General Settings

Change both the WordPress address (URL) and Blog address (URL)

from : http://www.yourdomain.com/wordpress

into : http://www.yourdomain.com

 

Go To your site

http://www.yourdomain.com

Just go and test it extensively

Does it work ?

Great, now delete the WordPress directory. (off course now is a good time to make another backup !)

Does your site still, work ?

Great you just migrated your site from Joomla! to WordPress.

Are you ready now ? No you’re not !

At this point you are facing the biggest Challenge !

Google knows all your old links to the old site.

So links like : http://www.iamboredsoiblog.eu/Adobe-Flex/flex-datagrid-advanced-paging-and-filtering.html

Will result in a 404 Error because the new links is :

http://www.iamboredsoiblog.eu/2009/01/10/advanced-paging-and-filtering-in-flex-datagrid/

Oh…. NO !!!!!! So now people and google will not be able to find the right pages.

Relax, you can set this right (it needs a bit of a work though.

Install the three following plugins.

1. Redirection

2. Google XML Sitemaps

3. Useful 404′s

 

Let’s start with nr 2. You will have to create an account on the Google WebmasterTools site. Here you can create a so called xml spider for all your post links within your site. Already had this ? Great just give your new link to google so it can index it.

Okay number 3. This is to let you know what urls cannot be found within your site. It mails you the misspelled link so you can use number 1 to fix this.

Number one, every misspelled link has to be put to the right link within your site. So the link I mentioned :

http://www.iamboredsoiblog.eu/Adobe-Flex/flex-datagrid-advanced-paging-and-filtering.html

goes automaticly to

http://www.iamboredsoiblog.eu/2009/01/10/advanced-paging-and-filtering-in-flex-datagrid/

 

That’s a lot of work, I know, but with the google xml index and the mails send to you this will be an overtime job (so you won’t be sitting 24 hours redirecting your urls)

Well that’s it.

If you have some trouble or problems do not hesitate to contact me.

Joomla! migration to WordPress, 5.4 out of 10 based on 5 ratings