Yes, migrating content from an ExpressionEngine site over to WordPress can be done. Moving the content does require a bit of technical knowledge and understanding of both platforms, but it is doable with the right resources.
The overall process of moving your content from one CMS (Content Management System) platform, such as Expression Engine, to another CMS like WordPress, can be quite complex and time consuming depending on how much data is stored in the source system.
Generally speaking, to complete this process, there are two objectives:
- Export the content from ExpressionEngine
- Import that content into WordPress
Overcoming these two, seemingly simple, objectives requires a bit of technical knowledge and understanding of both platforms.
Exporting Content from Expression Engine
There are numerous possible approaches to exporting content from ExpressionEngine. Which method is most appropriate for your organization’s website depends on the size and age of your EE website and on your technical capabilities.
No matter the reason for exporting, be it a reduced performance and an inability to optimize the performance of your ExpressionEngine website, or just a desire for the more modern capabilities WordPress offers, getting your data out of EE is the first task.
For larger and older EE sites, the best approach may be to look for an automated solution or a third-party tool. This can help you quickly identify and capture all of your content from ExpressionEngine for import into WordPress.
Exporting members from ExpressionEngine as users for WordPress is particularly tricky, but a solid process is available, when this type of data is a part of a site migration.
For smaller, more recently developed websites with less data stored in them the most efficient option is often just to manually copy over all of your code elements: pages, templates, blog posts etc., from one platform to another using a text editor like Notepad++ or Sublime Text 3 (which both offer syntax highlighting support for various coding languages).
When exporting your data for WordPress, or any of the other top alternatives to Expression Engine, its important to consider what content you want to migrate, and which content is stale, and may just be best left behind.
This process requires knowledge of FTP/SFTP access but can be done relatively quickly if you are familiar with website development practices and technologies.
Importing Content into WordPress
Once your content is extracted from ExpressionEngine, you will need to import it into WordPress. This can be done either manually or with a plugin that helps handle the moving of data from one platform to another.
For manual imports, you would likely start by creating pages in WordPress and then copying over all of the necessary code elements (pages, templates, etc.) into each page’s content.
The exact methods you’ll use here depend heavily on how exactly you need or want your website to be built, if you’ll be using a page builder, and the specific technical requirements of your website.
We have extensive experience migrating websites from ExpressionEngine to WordPress
At BIG, we specialize in migrating websites from one platform to another, specifically ExpressionEngine and WordPress. We have extensive experience in migrating websites from ExpressionEngine over to WordPress.
Our migration engineers are experts in migrations. They have migrated hundreds of websites from the Expression Engine platform over to WordPress.
They all say the same thing: migrations aren’t easy. It’s not easy to summarize the complexities and variables that come into play when migrating enterprise organization’s website from one CMS to another.
ExpressionEngine has quirks like no other platform, and WordPress has a strong learning curve. Thankfully, our migration team includes key core contributing members for BOTH WordPress and EE.
No matter how large, complex, broken, aged, or beautiful your website: your team can be confident in your next migration. Even if you think you have everything under control, reach out to us, our engineers are happy to help answer any questions you might have about migrating your website from Expression Engine to WordPress or any other platform of choice.
