Wix to WordPress

Digital Performance Marketing Blog & Definitions for SEM, Hosting, Migrating Websites & CMS

Help! I want to switch to WordPress.

It’s not a secret that building a website has become easier in the last 10 years. With the growth of responsive web pages, the overhead for design and hard coding is often overlooked. What seems like a functional website has become the subject of bootstrapping, stealing WordPress code and WYSIWYG editors, making this school of thought that “Building a website is Easy” virtually impossible to avoid.

I’ve already built my website in WordPress. Now what?

If you have already jumped ahead and put together a new website using WordPress.com or WordPress.org, then you only need to change a few settings in the DNS. We don’t recommend changing your registrar from Wix until it is up for renewal. There is a great list of Registrars for Canadians looking to buy a new domain or transfer an old one.

Easy as 1, 2, 3…

Step 1: Login to Wix.com, go to My Sites

Log into your Wix account and on the left panel there will be a list of websites associated with your account.

Let’s redirect this domain to some place better..

Step 2: Go to site manager & Manage Domains

Go into Wix’s Site Manager and select Manage Domains

Step 3: Wix will redirect you to another tab to manage A Records, CNAME

After you click on the “Manage Domains” button, another window should open up giving you access to the DNS settings. Click on Advanced to continue.

Almost there! A few clicks from changing your DNS A Record to the new host.

Step 4: Change A Record and check CNAME

Once you open the Host record and CNAME (Aliases) you can adjust the Wix settings to forward to your WordPress hosted property. We recommend setting the TTL to 30 minutes for the fastest results.

Final Step: Forward Host name to new Host IP, check CNAME Aliases

In this example we have used lioneater.com as the host name. Wix automatically creates the sub domains for mobile and www, which can cause concerns for your SEO strategy. Since WordPress is fully responsive, there is no need for a mobile version of the site. We will forward them both to the domain that we’ve pointed to our HOST IP.

See example above

A Exit Strategy from Wix to WordPress

If you are already ready to let go of Wix completely, just click on “Transfer from Wix” and you will be greeted with a popup that will ask for a confirmation. Once you receive your code you can transfer to the new registrar.