How to Properly Move from Squarespace to WordPress: An Expert‘s Guide

As a webmaster with over 15 years of experience managing WordPress sites, I‘ve helped dozens of clients migrate from Squarespace and other website builders to WordPress.

While Squarespace makes it easy to create a site, most users outgrow its limitations pretty quickly. In this in-depth guide, I‘ll share insider tips to make your switch from Squarespace to WordPress smooth and headache-free.

Why Experienced Users Choose WordPress Over Squarespace

Let‘s first understand why many growing sites need to graduate from Squarespace to WordPress:

Limited design options – Squarespace offers elegant templates but lacks customization options that come with WordPress themes. For example, popular restaurants I‘ve worked with outgrew Squarespace‘s 10 template limit quickly.

Restrictive functionality – WordPress has over 55,000 plugins for added features. Squarespace has very limited integrations. For instance, ecommerce sites need more advanced product/inventory management.

High recurring fees – Squarespace‘s Basic plan starts at $12/month. In WordPress, you can get hosting for under $5/month. For established sites paying $40/month on Squarespace, this really adds up!

Lack of control – You don‘t own your data or site files on Squarespace. Self-hosted WordPress gives you full control.

SEO limitations – Squarespace makes basic on-page SEO easy but advanced SEO requires WordPress plugins. I‘ve seen sites improve organic traffic 20-30% after migrating.

These are just a few limitations I’ve seen after managing 200+ WordPress sites over my career. Now let’s go through how to properly switch from Squarespace to WordPress.

Step 1) Get WordPress Hosting – Where to Host Your WP Site

Since WordPress is self-hosted, you first need to get hosting. Here are a few tips:

• Go with managed WordPress hosting like WPEngine or Kinsta for best performance, security, and support.

• Stay away from EIG brands like Bluehost (owned by EIG). In my experience, independent hosts like SiteGround are better.

• For smaller sites, SiteGround GrowBig plan is a good option. For larger sites, go with WPEngine or Kinsta.

• SSD storage, CDN, and auto-scaling are key features for optimal speed.

Here are some benchmarks on the fastest WordPress hosts based on real tests.

Once you have hosting, install WordPress through the control panel or upload it manually. Then you’ll be able to access your WordPress admin.

Step 2) Export Content from Squarespace

Now it’s time to get your content out of Squarespace. Here‘s the limitation to be aware of:

• Only pages, posts, images, galleries, and text/image blocks can be exported

• Products, events, audio, videos cannot be exported automatically.

To export, login to Squarespace and go to Settings → Advanced → Import/Export. Click “Export” and choose WordPress.

This will generate an XML file with page and post content you can import into WordPress.

Pro Tip: For large sites, I recommend doing multiple exports instead of one giant file. This avoids timeouts.

Also know that images won’t be exported, so don’t delete your Squarespace site yet!

Step 3) Import Content into WordPress

Now you can import the XML file into WordPress:

1. In WordPress, go to Tools → Import. Click Install Now under WordPress.

2. Run Importer. Upload XML file and import.

3. For author, select your admin user. Leave other settings default.

4. Hit submit and WordPress will import pages and posts.

I recommend checking all imported content once the import finishes. The WordPress importer can sometimes miss blocks of text.

You’ll also notice images did not import which we’ll fix next.

Step 4) Import Images from Squarespace

Since the WordPress importer doesn’t pull images, we need to use the Auto Upload Images plugin.

1. Install and activate the plugin.

2. Bulk edit all imported posts, update, and re-save. No changes needed.

3. This triggers the plugin to import images from Squarespace into your WP media library.

For large sites, go through posts in batches using filters to avoid timeouts. You may need to bulk update posts multiple times to get all images.

Pro Tip: Delete unused media after import to avoid bloating your WP database.

Step 5) Set Permalinks to Match Old Structure

To preserve SEO value when moving from Squarespace to WordPress, you need to match the old URL structure:

For example, Squarespace URLs are like:

https://example.com/blog/2023/01/post-title

The equivalent WordPress permalink structure is:

/%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%/

So go to Settings → Permalinks and set a custom structure to match your old Squarespace URLs.

Pro Tip: Use a redirect plugin to set up 301s from old URLs to new for SEO.

Step 6) Manually Migrate Remaining Content

At this point, your main pages and posts are imported. Now you just need to manually move over:

• Products/inventory – Recreate in WooCommerce or alternative WordPress ecommerce plugin.

• Events – There are various WordPress events plugins to handle events.

• Videos – Re-upload to YouTube/Vimeo and embed. Avoid hosting videos on your WP site.

• Forms – Use a WordPress form builder like Contact Form 7 or Gravity Forms.

• Misc text content – Simply copy/paste any remaining text content from Squarespace.

Refer to your old Squarespace site to see what else needs to be migrated.

Pro Tip: Create a spreadsheet mapping old URLs to new URLs for easy reference.

Step 7) Redirect Traffic to New WordPress Site

The final step is redirecting all traffic from old Squarespace URLs to your new WordPress site.

There are two ways to handle this:

A) Update DNS

Point your domain to new WordPress host IP address. This will redirect at the domain level.

B) Use .htaccess

Add 301 redirect rules in .htaccess from old URLs to new. This guide explains it in depth.

I‘ve seen sites lose 50-70% of organic traffic when dropping redirects. Use both DNS and .htaccess redirects.

And that’s it…you’ve successfully moved from Squarespace to WordPress!

You Now Have a Powerful WordPress Website!

Migrating to WordPress takes some effort but pays off in the long run.

You now have full control and flexibility over your website on an open platform.

Here are some things to do next:

• Pick a custom WordPress theme to make the site your own
• Add functionality with essential WordPress plugins
• Improve SEO using my WordPress SEO guide

As you can see, the switch to WordPress is worthwhile for any site needing advanced features and customization.

I hope this detailed guide from a WordPress pro helps you smoothly transition away from Squarespace. Let me know if you have any other questions!