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Moving from WordPress

How a move off WordPress works: your content exported, your SEO settings carried across, WordPress's own addresses redirected, and the old hosting closed last.

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What comes with you

Leaving WordPress, piece by piece. What moves, and what doesn't.

Stays on WordPress

The theme, the page builder, the plugins and the hosting that ran them.

  • The theme and page builder
  • Twenty-odd plugins to update
  • The hosting account
  • Theme and plugin licences
  • Updates and security patches

Comes with you

Your content and media, your SEO settings, your form entries, your domain and your rankings.

  • Pages, posts and media
  • Titles and descriptions from your SEO plugin
  • Form entries, exported
  • Your domain and email
  • Your rankings, through redirects

How the move runs

Moving off WordPress, step by step. From the first call to the weeks after.

Your WordPress site stays live until the day we switch.

Nothing goes dark while the new site is built, and nothing is cancelled until it's live.

  1. 01Take stockEvery page, post, plugin and form on the site, listed.
  2. 02Export everythingPages, posts and media from WordPress's own export, plus plugin data.
  3. 03Plan the new siteA page map built around your customers, not the old theme.
  4. 04Design and buildYour new site, designed and built in code, on a private link.
  5. 05Bring the content acrossContent moved over, with page builder clutter cleaned out.
  6. 06Map every addressPages, posts, categories, tags and WordPress's own URLs matched to new pages.
  7. 07Switch the domainThe domain pointed at the new site, with email checked first.
  8. 08Watch the weeks afterSearch Console and forms checked; hosting and licences cancelled last.

What's different about leaving WordPress

The catches, and how we handle them. Specific to WordPress.

A full content export

WordPress exports pages, posts and media, which makes the move easier than most.

SEO plugin settings

Titles, descriptions and redirects from your SEO plugin carried across.

WordPress's extra addresses

Category, tag, author, attachment and ?p= URLs, each redirected or retired.

Form plugin entries

Past enquiries exported from the form plugin before it's switched off.

Shortcodes in the content

Page builder shortcodes cleaned out of every page and post.

A WooCommerce shop

Products, customers and orders exported, if the site sells online.

Hosting and email

Hosting closed last; email checked first if it lives on the same host.

Licences

Theme and plugin renewals cancelled once the old site is gone.

Keeping your rankings

How your search rankings come with you. The checklist we work through.

Rankings move with the pages, as long as every page has somewhere to go.

Search engines know your WordPress site by its addresses. Each one is mapped to its new page before the switch.

  • Every old address mappedEvery page, post, category and tag address matched to a new page.
  • Permanent redirectsEach old page sends visitors and search engines to its new one.
  • Titles and descriptions carriedThe words search results show, kept or improved.
  • Structured data addedYour business, services and reviews, in the form search engines read.
  • A new sitemapSubmitted to Google and Bing the day the site goes live.
  • Search Console watchedErrors and missing pages caught in the weeks after the switch.
  • Your Business Profile linkedThe website link on your Google Business Profile updated.
  • Load time checkedPages tested on phones before launch, so the new site starts ahead.

Moving from WordPress, explained

Everything to know before you leave WordPress. In plain English.

Why businesses leave WordPress

Few businesses leave WordPress because of WordPress itself. They leave because of what grew around it: a theme from years ago, a page builder slowing every page, plugins nobody dares update, and a developer who has moved on. The site becomes something to manage instead of something that works.

Of every platform, WordPress is one of the easiest to leave, because its content exports cleanly.

What you can export

WordPress exports pages, posts, categories and media in a standard file, and the media library can be copied in full. SEO plugin settings, form entries and shop data come out through their own exports.

What doesn't come is the clutter: page builder shortcodes, plugin leftovers and old theme settings. We clean those out as the content comes across.

WordPress's extra addresses

WordPress creates many addresses on its own: category and tag archives, author pages, attachment pages for images, and short links like ?p=123. Search engines often know them. Each one is redirected to its best new page, or retired properly, so no rankings are left behind.

Hosting, email and the switch

Email sometimes runs through the same hosting account as the site. We check where it lives first, so moving the site never touches the mail. On the day, the domain points to the new site with the redirects in place, and the old hosting stays until everything is confirmed.

The weeks after

We watch Search Console for missed addresses, test every form, and resubmit the sitemap. Once the new site has settled, the old hosting and the theme and plugin licences are cancelled, and there's nothing left to update.

  • Search Console watched
  • Forms tested
  • Hosting and licences cancelled last

Questions and answers

Still have a question?

Ask us anything. We'll answer it straight, even if the answer is that we're not the right fit.

Ask us

  • The content, yes: pages, posts, categories and media export cleanly, which makes WordPress one of the easier platforms to leave. The theme and plugins stay behind.

  • Yes. Titles, descriptions and any redirects you set in your SEO plugin are carried across to the new site.

  • Each is redirected to its best new page or retired properly, so search engines don't hit dead ends.

  • It stays until the new site is live and checked. If your email runs through the same host, we sort that out first.

  • No. Your WordPress site stays live while the new one is built, and the switch takes minutes once it's ready. Visitors go from one to the other without a gap.

  • Not if every old address is redirected to its new page, which we set up before the switch. Rankings usually hold through the move, and often improve once the new pages settle in.

  • The move is part of building the new site: a fixed project price agreed before anything starts, then one monthly fee to host and look after it. You keep paying WordPress only until the switch.

Kind words

Hear it from the businesses we've built for. What it's like to work with us, in their own words.

“Our new website and ads brought in more customers than we expected. Stratasis made the whole thing easy from start to finish.”
Anna BorowskaOwner, Apex Windows
“They took our whole website from idea to launch, online booking included, and never made it feel complicated.”
Elizabeth MarkowskiOwner, Virelle
“Everything was built around how we actually work, with the compliance side looked after from the first day.”
Daniel ZhaoFounder, Pelagion
“One team for the brand, the site and the ads. It finally feels like one business online.”
Mark SullivanDirector, Harbor
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