After 15 years of building websites, I‘ve used my fair share of blogging platforms. I spent some time with Ghost, but ultimately found WordPress to be a better choice for growing sites long-term.
In this guide, I‘ll share the step-by-step process I use to seamlessly migrate sites from Ghost over to WordPress. I‘ll also explain some of the key reasons you may want to make the switch based on my own experiences.
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Why I Chose to Switch from Ghost to WordPress
Let me start by explaining what led me to move away from Ghost in the first place:
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Flexibility. One of the biggest reasons I prefer WordPress is the flexibility it provides. With over 55,000 free themes and plugins, you can customize your site to do almost anything you can imagine! Ghost just felt too restrictive for some of my more ambitious website projects.
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SEO capabilities. Search engine optimization is vital for driving organic traffic. WordPress gives you better built-in SEO with customizable URLs, metadata, and XML sitemaps. Ghost‘s limited options made SEO an uphill battle. Just switching to WordPress typically gave my sites an instant boost!
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Scalability. When I first launched some of my sites on Ghost, they were small passion projects. But as the sites and audiences grew, Ghost started to buckle under the pressure. With WordPress, I‘ve been able to smoothly scale sites to handle hundreds of thousands of visitors per month.
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Cost savings. Once your site gets to a certain size, Ghost‘s hosting costs can get prohibitively expensive. The free open source WordPress software and cheap self-hosted options have saved me thousands in hosting costs!
Clearly WordPress was the right choice for my needs, but I know everyone‘s situations are unique. Here‘s a comparison of Ghost vs WordPress on some key factors:
| Factor | Ghost | WordPress |
|---|---|---|
| Ease of Use | Slightly easier for blogging | Steeper learning curve but better customization |
| Design Options | Limited themes | Thousands of free and premium themes |
| Plugins/Integrations | Very limited | Over 55,000 plugins for endless integrations |
| SEO Tools | Basic | Advanced SEO plugins available |
| Scalability | Can struggle with large sites | Proven to scale to enterprise-level sites |
| Cost | Can get expensive for large sites | Free software reduces costs |
Hopefully seeing this direct comparison helps provide some useful context! Now let‘s get into how to actually migrate your Ghost site over to WordPress.
Step-by-Step Guide to Migrate from Ghost to WordPress
Based on my experience transitioning multiple sites off Ghost, here is the detailed process I recommend:
Back Up Your Ghost Site
Before touching anything, be sure to back up your Ghost site. This acts as insurance in case anything goes wrong along the way.
Log into your Ghost admin, head to the Settings area, and export a backup. Download it and keep it in a safe place – better to be safe than sorry!
Set Up a New WordPress Installation
If your Ghost site uses a custom domain you want to keep, I suggest installing WordPress on a temporary subdomain for now. That way you can get WordPress ready without immediately affecting your live domain.
For example, you could install WordPress at migrationtest.yourdomain.com before changing the DNS records.
I recommend using a managed WordPress host like Bluehost to handle all the technical optimization like caching and security. The low monthly cost is well worth it!
Once your new WordPress site is installed, log into the admin area at yourdomain.com/wp-admin. This is where you‘ll manage everything as you transition over.
Export Your Data from Ghost
Now it‘s time to get your actual website content out of Ghost. In your Ghost admin, head to Settings > Labs and use the Export Tool to download a JSON file with your posts, tags, images, etc.
Convert the JSON File to XML
Here comes the tricky part – the Ghost JSON format needs to be converted into WordPress-friendly XML before it can be imported.
Thankfully there are free online converters that make this process easy. Run your JSON file through the tool to get your new XML import file.
Import Everything into WordPress
With your XML file ready, it‘s time to get your Ghost content into WordPress. Go to Tools > Import in your new WordPress dashboard to install the WordPress Importer.
Run the importer, upload your XML file, and be sure to check the box to import media files. This will pull your images into the WordPress media library.
You may need to run the importer a couple times to catch everything. Don‘t worry, it will skip over any duplicates so it‘s safe to re-import.
Redirect Your Domain to WordPress
Once all your content is safely imported to WordPress, it‘s time to direct your domain name to point to the new site.
Log into your domain registrar and update the nameservers to your WordPress host‘s details. This will switch traffic over to your shiny new WordPress site!
Clean Up and Optimize Your New Site
With the migration complete, I recommend going through these housekeeping steps:
- Install an SEO plugin like Yoast to optimize on-page elements
- Set up 301 redirects if you changed any URLs
- Submit an updated sitemap to search engines
- Configure caching for better performance
- Install security plugins like Wordfence to protect your site
Little optimizations like this will get your new WordPress site off on the right foot.
Your Ghost to WordPress Migration is Complete!
And with that, you have successfully transitioned your Ghost website over to the power and flexibility of WordPress.
The first time I made the switch, it was a bit intimidating. But after doing it multiple times over the years, I can assure you that the process is very manageable if you follow these steps.
Now get out there and start enjoying everything WordPress has to offer your site! Let me know if you have any other questions – I‘m always happy to help out.
