Moving Your Website To WordPress

This is an informative blog post on moving your website to WordPress. It is what has worked for me.

While you are busy setting up your WordPress site and getting to move your website to WordPress, you can continue blogging. You will not complete the final move until you are happy with how it looks etc.

Either you or someone else has started the move of your website to WordPress. Log In to your WordPress site

1. Plugins:
   1. Click on the installed plugins and delete Hello Dolly
   2. Activate Akismet
   3. Install the following plugins (the ones in bold are a must in my opinion and from the advice I have been given from an SEO expert):
      1. AuthorSure
      2. Broken Link Checker
      3. CommentLuv
      4. Easy Recipe or Easy Recipe Plus (you pay for Plus but it gives you more features)
      5. Facebook
      6. FD Feedburner Plugin
      7. GD Star Rating
      8. Google Analytics
      9. Google Translator
      10. Jetpack by WordPress.com
      11. Pinterest Pin It Button For Images
      12. SEO Friendly Images
      13. SEO Smart Links
      14. Simple 301 Redirects
      15. Smart 404
      16. Social Media Widget
      17. W3 Total Cache
      18. WordPress Editorial Calendar
      19. WordPress SEO
      20. WP Edit
   4. Active and go into the settings of the plugins

2. Settings:
   1. Under: General you can set your tagline
   2. Under: Writing you can select your default post category (create one called recipes and make it this one if you are a food blogger)
   3. Under: Reading you will see the click next to Discourage search engines from indexing this site. You will unclick this when you are ready to go live
   4. Under: Discussion, change the settings to suit you
   5. Under: Permalinks change the setting to suit you (I have mine as post name).
3. Theme:
   1. You will find this under Appearance
   2. There will be themes already installed. You can use what is there or install your own theme (I use Weaver II)
   3. Delete the themes you are not using
   4. Customise your theme
4. Pages
   1. You will find a sample page. Bin it and delete it
5. Posts
   1. You will find a sample post. Bin it and delete it

Once you have the appearance just as you want it you can get ready to move your site. At this point you must stop blogging. I would suggest you create one last blog post telling people you are moving your site.

1. Click on Tools / Import
2. Install the importer file
3. If your blog platform is not listed then look at the available plugins and install an importer from there
4. Import your blog

Once you have imported your blog, spend some time making sure everything is as you want it to be. Take your time! You do not want to go back and do this again when your site is live. Use broken link checker to help you with this and work through them all before you move on.

When this is done, you are ready to go live!

1. Click on Tools / Export and export All Content to your hard drive. At least if something goes wrong, you will have the file on your computer!
2. Go into FileZilla
   1. Delete your old site
   2. Delete the index.html file
   3. Delete the index.htm file
   4. Delete all other .html files
3. Go into WordPress
   1. Unclick Discourage search engines from indexing this site

Your site is now moved and live! Please note, this worked for me. I cannot guarantee that it will work for you. If you need help send me an email. 

What I blogged May 20:

• two years ago – Linguine Marinara Con Ricotta
• three years ago – The Versatile Blogger Award
• four years ago – Tiramisu

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