How to Migrate Joomla websites to WordPress sites

If you are a returning subscriber or user to myblogs website you might have noticed that the entire website has undergone a major transformation. We decided to change from Joomla platform using K2 items to WordPress website for many good reasons.

No doubt Joomla is one of the most popular CMS out there and our team have developed over 1000’s website in Joomla CMS in Dubai and around GCC. We had the special privilege of developing DTMFZA (Dubai Technology and Media Free Zone Authority) website in joomla cms, which is currently re-branded has DCCA (Dubai Creative Clusters Authority)

Moving to a new CMS is often considered a daunting task. If you have been putting off your migration plan, for fear of losing content and thinking it’s going to be too much of mess, trust me it’s quite simple and free. Just go ahead and migrate. Please note there are few paid plugins to automate your migration. If you are like me, who is a DIY freak, then read below, “How to migrate K2 item enabled Joomla website to WordPress. If you need professional help in migrating Joomla websites to WordPress contact our agency Ci Corp FZE, Digital Innovation company located in Dtec, Dubai Silicon Oasis.

Migration to WordPress CMS isn’t that difficult, but it’s not the time to relax and take things lightly. So we have curated some tips and steps follow them and if you are stuck leave a comment and we can help you resolve your blockades.

1. First and foremost, take complete back up of Joomla database, using phpMyAdmin
   Please note if you are going to use the free plugin for content migration, please note it supports single user and single category, and if you have multiple users in your Joomla K2 users, run a SQL query to convert all content users to one user before following step 2 and 3, later you can change it wordpress.
2. Migrate K2 Categories to Joomla Native Content Categories (if you are already using Joomla native articles skip this and next step). Replace “dbprefix” with your db value
   Access phpMyAdmin and go to Joomla website database, click SQL Query and enter the below queries and click go, ref image sql query 1
   

   INSERT INTO dbprefix_categories (title,alias,parent_id,published,access,extension) SELECT name,alias,parent,published,access, 'com_content' FROM dbprefix_k2_categories

   

   SQL Query 1

3. Migrate K2 items to Joomla articles, replace “dbprefix” and “yourDBname” with your db value
   

   INSERT INTO `yourDBname`.`dbprefix_content` (`id`, `title`, `alias`, `catid`, `introtext`, `fulltext`, `created`, `created_by`, `created_by_alias`, `checked_out`, `checked_out_time`, `modified`, `modified_by`, `publish_up`, `publish_down`, `access`, `featured`, `hits`, `language`) SELECT `id`, `title`, `alias`, `catid`, `introtext`, `fulltext`, `created`, `created_by`, `created_by_alias`, `checked_out`, `checked_out_time`, `modified`, `modified_by`, `publish_up`, `publish_down`, `access`, `featured`, `hits`, `language` FROM `yourDBname`.`dbprefix_k2_items`

   

   SQL Query 2

   If the above two queries were successful, all your K2 items, and K2 categories will be copied into Joomla content.

4. Migrate Joomla articles to WordPress posts, to do so, login to your new WordPress site and install the below plugin
   FG Joomla to WordPress
   Once the plugin is installed and activated, go to Tools>>Import and you should see Joomla (FG) in import tools list Click on Joomla (FG)Rest of the process is pretty straightforward.

Once the migration is completed follow these steps.

• Check all Migrated contents, including images.
• Adjust Designs after migration to match your theme
• Add all the functionality that you planned.
• Install broken link plugin to see if any of the links are broken and fix them.
• Finally set up 301 redirects as the new url structure will change, and it’s always advised to install 404 redirected plugin to automate missing links and match your contents.
• Monitor your Google Console to see if everything is working fine, (don’t forget to setup google webmasters tool plugin)

If all the above looks too much confusing, our company can help you migrate your Joomla website to WordPress website. Contact us now.