Beginning your web presence from a free website platform may prove to be a wise move if you do not want to spend any money on hosting services. Nevertheless, as your website starts growing, you will require more control over it.
The move to a self-hosted version of WordPress enables you to gain more control over the files of the website, its database, themes and plugins, hosting, and domain. But moving to WordPress is not just about transferring your pages into WordPress; it also involves safeguarding your URLs, transferring your content, setting up your domain and DNS, installing your SSL, and testing your site.
Migrating your website without proper planning will lead to broken links, image loss, duplication, and loss of search traffic. The article below is going to show you how to migrate from a free web platform to WordPress.
Table of Contents
What is Self-Hosted WordPress
Self-hosted WordPress refers to the installation of WordPress software in your web hosting environment that you control. This contrasts with the use of a free website builder where the host handles the entire web hosting space and restricts customization options.
In WordPress hosted on your own server, you usually have more control over:
- PHP and WordPress settings
- Website files and database
- Themes and plugins
- SEO tools
- Custom functionalities
- Caching and performance optimization
- Security settings
- Domain and DNS settings
- Backups
- Server resources
The extra control also makes you responsible for managing WordPress, plugins, themes, backups, security, and server resources.
Why Should You Switch to Self-Hosted WordPress
The first thing is control.
A free site may have limited options for you to install any additional software, change some technical parameters, utilize SEO tools, generate money from your site, or customize the site’s functionality.
A self-hosted version will give you that opportunity. There will be increased flexibility for self-hosted WordPress as your needs change.
This might include things like creating an online store, having a membership function, complex contact forms, analytical tools, redirects, caching, and other SEO specific functions. The move to the self-hosted version would make these improvements easier.
This might include things like creating an online store, having a membership function, complex contact forms, analytical tools, redirects, caching, and other SEO specific functions. However, the transition should be considered if it meets your site’s requirements.
How to Switch from a Free Website Platform to Self-Hosted WordPress
1. Pick Your WordPress Hosting Provider Before Moving Your Site
When it comes to migration of your site, choose a hosting plan that will be able to handle the load.
Some factors to consider include:
- CPU and RAM
- Databases
- Location of server
- SSL availability
- Storage
- PHP version
- Bandwidth
- Backups
- Support
- Caching
- Security
- Upgrades
Never base your decision about which type of hosting to purchase only on space needed. Even small websites may need a lot of resources from the server due to a variety of reasons.
If your website is small, you will be able to use shared hosting with WordPress. For large or resource-intensive sites, the VPS would be needed at some point.
2. Prepare Your Existing Website
Do not start off the process of migration with changing the settings of your domain straight away.
Start with making a detailed list of the existing site.
Note:
- URLs of all significant pages
- Metadata
- URLs of blog posts
- Images and other downloadable files
- Navigation menu
- Contact forms
- Significant SEO configurations
- Tracking code
- Pages with search traffic
It helps you have an idea about how you can reconstruct your website if any information gets lost during migration.
In case you can, try to download or export your website’s content using the tools available on your current platform.
3. Backup Everything You Can
There shouldn’t be a migration without a plan for recovering. Back up or export the content that can be extracted from your existing platform before making any big moves.
In case of a self-hosted WordPress install, the standard backup will typically include:
Website files – themes, plugins, uploads, config files, and any other WordPress files.
Database – blog posts, pages, settings, comments, users, and any other database entries.
Steps involved in migrating the website depend on the system you will be migrating from. Keep the original site until you are sure the new WordPress site is functioning well.
4. Install WordPress on Your Newly Created Hosting Account
Once you have created your hosting account, it’s time to install WordPress. Most web hosting companies have an automatic installation of WordPress available.
You may also do a manual installation in case you have some specific requirements for configuration. While installing WordPress, ensure that you use the right domain for your installation.
Before modifying the DNS settings, you can test the website through a temporary link, staging server, hosts file setting, or any other process made available by the host company.
This enables you to develop and test the website without sending users to the new server.
5. Transfer Your Content and Media
The method used will depend on the platform from which you are migrating.
In the case where the former platform has an option for WordPress export, follow the relevant import procedure for WordPress.
Where there is no direct import to WordPress, other methods of importing may be used. Be especially careful with:
- Authors
- Page content
- Blog content
- Media files
- Categories
- Featured images
- Tags
- Dates of publication
- Downloadable files
- Internal links
It is important not to presume that all content moves when importing text. The images will point to the old system, as well as internal links.
6. Preserve Your Existing URLs
URL preservation can be considered one of the most critical steps for your SEO-friendly migration.
Let’s say we have an existing page that can be accessed through:
example.com/blog/web-hosting-guide
If the new WordPress version changes to:
example.com/web-hosting-guide
then your URL is changed.
This may not be an issue but you have to make sure that you effectively forward the old URL to the new URL.
It will always be better to retain the same URL structure if possible.
Make a table for URL mapping which will contain:
| Â Old URL | New URL | Status Code |
| Â /about-us | /about-us | 301 |
| /blog/hosting-guide | /hosting-guide | 301 |
| /contact | /contact | 301 |
It is particularly necessary to perform this task for pages which already have backlinks or bookmarks.
7. Create 301 redirects
If any URL changes, set up a 301 redirect from the old URLs to the new URLs. This informs web browsers and search engines that the page has been permanently moved.
Do not redirect all old pages to the home page; rather, redirect them to the closest related new page, if at all possible.
This process is not recommended to use for:
Original URL -> Redirect URL -> New URL -> Destination.
A cleaner way to migrate would be to directly redirect to the destination.
8. Configure Your Domain and DNS
Now that your WordPress site is up and running, you can point your domain to the new environment.
This often entails making alterations in DNS records or in the nameservers for your domain name. Propagation of changes made to DNS might get delayed.
Never cancel the current hosting plan or free platform right away after making changes in DNS. The old website should still be up until you verify the resolution of the domain name and that the new website works.
9. Installation and Checking for SSL
Your new website should be able to run on HTTPS. Once the domain starts pointing to the new server, install the SSL certificate.
Make sure that:
- https://yourdomain.com is working
- The HTTP request is being redirected to HTTPS
- The images and scripts are loading properly
- You don’t have any mixed content warnings
- WordPress and site URLs are using HTTPS
Migration may mistakenly include older HTTP references within the database/content; test the key pages once the SSL is enabled.
10. Testing of the Website – Pre and Post Launch
The testing shouldn’t be limited to checking whether the homepage is available.
Tests:
- Blog Posts
- Images
- Website Analytics
- Structured Data
- Navigation Menus
- 404 Pages
- Important Pages
- Contact Forms
- Search
- Downloads
- Mobile Optimization
- Load Time
- Internal Links
- Redirection
- HTTPS
- Verification on Search Consoled
Perform a broken links check or crawl the website to identify which links show error codes.
Also, check the new website against the list of URLs that you have for your old website.
11. Protect Your SEO After Website Migration
A website migration can affect search performance if important technical signals are changed incorrectly.
After migration, ensure that:
- Important pages are indexed
- Important pages have HTTP 200 status codes
- HTTPS is implemented
- Canonical URLs are correct
- The XML sitemap is correctly set up
- No blocking of essential pages in the robots.txt file
- 301 redirections working properly
- Google Search Console is configured
- Internal linking for new URLs
- Google Analytics tracking working properly
- Essential pages with HTTP 200 status code
Never use the noindex command for the entire website during the live migration process. If the new website was built in the staging environment, make sure that those temporary restrictions are now removed.
Mistakes to Avoid in a WordPress Migration
1. Removing the Old Platform Prematurely
Let the old site remain until all the elements of the new site and content have been checked
2. Doing Everything at Once
Do not change the domain name, URL, content, theme, and website structure at once, unless there is a good reason.
By leaving some things unchanged, you will be able to determine the cause of errors easier.
3. Not Paying Attention to the Images
The images may get misplaced during the migration or keep on loading from the old platform itself.
4. Migration Errors That You Should Avoid
There are several errors that can make your WordPress migration harder than necessary.
5. Failure to Remember Old URLs
In case of disappearance of URLs without redirection, the user might face 404 errors and search engines will fail to access the indexed pages.
Conclusion
The process of shifting from a free web site provider to WordPress means having more control over your website but also requires careful planning.
Backup of your content is necessary, along with appropriate hosting, uploading of your files and data, securing important links, setting redirects and DNS, installing SSL and testing the new site.
Your website migration will be considered successful when you end up with an operational website and clear signals for the search engines about your migrated content.
Ready to Move to Self-Hosted WordPress
With self-hosted WordPress, you can get complete control of your website’s performance, functionality, security, and future scalability.
HarmonWeb offers WordPress hosting, shared hosting, and VPS hosting options for sites that require various hosting services depending on their growth stage. Find the right type of hosting service for your WordPress site and migrate without any risks to your content or SEO ranking.
