How to switch from Ghost to WordPress step by step guide

How to switch from Ghost to WordPress – If you are using Ghost, want to switch to a more powerful website writing platform, more often, this is how to switch from Ghost to WordPress.

Ghost, the overall software solution is great, but it is more difficult for newbies especially if you are not good at code or you don't have a lot of budget.

This tutorial contains steps to do if you want to move your website from Ghost to WordPress:

• Enter your web post via JSON or RSS
• Enter the Ghost page on your side
• Enter the image with you
• Redirect your Ghost website to WordPress

What to consider when you switch from Ghost to WordPress

When moving to a new website platform, you need to consider a few specific factors before your website is completely moved.

Here is what we will move:

• Your web post from Ghost
• Sub page
• Photos and media
• The address of the website itself

The whole thing is done even if you have no special experience with the website platform, but Ghost certainly does not do everything easily. In fact, there's really no plug-and-play tool to get you moving. But don't worry, I'll help you through the whole process here.

Before proceeding, you should have a WordPress site running on your target server – where you will be moving ghost content on your side. If you want help installing WordPress, follow this guide.

1. Enter the post on your website via JSON or RSS

Start by exporting your website post out of Ghost.

You do this in two ways:

• Use the native export feature in Ghost to a JSON file
• Or grab the RSS feed from the website and use it to move from Ghost to WordPress

First, we'll start with the RSS feed and then show you how to handle JSON files.

The reason we are not talking about JSON first is that this file type is only useful if you try to convert it to a WordPress website. WordPress cannot read JSON file by default. Making it useful requires a few workarounds. That is why we will RSS first.

Method a: How to import Ghost web content with you via RSS

First you will need our plugin called Feedzy. The pro version of the plugin has a feature called Feed to post. With it you are allowed to grab any RSS feed from the web and then enter the content into your website as a post on the website.

Once you've used Feedzy, you install it like any other WordPress plugin (this is a guide to help you solve it).

With the plugin installed, go to Feedzy RSS → enter the article.

Enter the RSS feed URL on your Ghost website in the box. For most Ghost websites, that URL is: https: //YOURDOMAIN.com/rss/

On the next page, make sure you choose the following option:

(It tells Feedzy to enter all available content items.)

Next, specify the individual components from the feed with their corresponding values ​​in the WordPress database. Here are the options:

At this stage, you activate the import. Return to the main Feedzy dashboard at the WordPress dashboard, then click Run Now to start importing.

You should see this confirmation after 1 minute or so:

This means the import was successfully made. Because all content is currently downloaded, you can disable the import process in progress by clicking the green switch button.

When you go to the Posts menu at your WordPress dashboard, you will see the entire website post is imported from Ghost.

Method b: How to enter the content of your Ghost website via JSON

Note; skip to step 2 if you've entered Ghost content with you using the RSS method described above.

To follow the JSON route as you move from Ghost to WordPress, you first need to get the output file from Ghost itself.

Log in to your Ghost user control panel, then go to Labs. Click the export button next to the content export label beside you.

After a while, your JSON export file will be saved to your desktop.

To use that file to import WordPress, you must first convert it to a format that WordPress understands. Unfortunately, there is no official tool for this from the WordPress team.

Luckily, there are several great developers in the WordPress community, among them, that is Ahmed Amayem, has come up with a working solution. You can use the latest working version of the converter on the Amayem website here or, if you are interested, get the source code from GitHub.

Just paste the content of your JSON file into the box on Amayem's website, get the output from another box, and save it as an XML file.

Now take this XML file and import it through your WordPress dashboard. Once in the control panel, go to Tools → Import, click install right at the WordPress section. This will install the dedicated WordPress import plugin. Click on Run Importer.

Select the XML file from your desktop and click upload file, import.

After a few seconds, posts on your Ghost site will be imported into your WordPress website.

See more: How to back up the Website

2. Enter the Ghost page on your side

In addition to posting on the website, many users also have pages similar to the Ghost website. If that is the case with your website, you will probably want to move that page to WordPress as well.

Unfortunately, there is no single way you can handle this task. To make it happen, you have to move the content on that page manually.

We will use additional tools to do that: Elementor. Elementor is a free WordPress plugin that provides you with an entirely intuitive, drag-and-drop page building interface.

You have Elementor installed like any other WordPress plugin.

Once Elementor is installed, go back to Ghost and go through the page next to you. Your task is to recreate each page at Elementor. And you will have to do this manually, but it's not difficult because Elementor is really easy to use. You can move most content through a simple copy-paste operation and then rebuild your page design using the Elementor feature.

3. Move your images from Ghost to WordPress

The thing to do now is move the image to your side.

We will do it with the new plugin: Auto Upload Images.

What this plugin does is simple: whenever you save a post on a website, the plugin scans the image URL in that post and then uploads all the missing images to your server. In other words, it will take images from your Ghost site and then import them into WordPress.

With the plugin already installed, go to Settings → Auto Upload Images.

Do nothing else, then click save.

This plugin only does its work when saving posts on the website. This means that we must somehow enable it to work and then scan through the post entered on our side.

Go to the section of your post at your WordPress dashboard and select all posts by checking the box on the top of the page:

Click bulk options and select edit from the dropdown menu.

Click Apply.

You will see a bigger panel, all you have to do is click the update button.

This will trigger the plugin to scan through your side post and then import all images.

4. Redirect your Ghost website to WordPress

The final step is to make sure that when visitors access your site on Ghost, they will automatically be redirected to your new setup running on WordPress.

Fortunately, this is just a simple tweak to do with your domain registrar. Domain registrar is the first place you buy the domain name used by your website on Ghost.

All you have to do is go to the registrar, log in to the user control panel, and redirect that domain name to the new server on your side – where your WordPress website operates.

Based on who is your party subscriber, sometimes you make this change yourself, but sometimes you'll have to contact the support team to handle the work for you.

With the domain being redirected at the registration level, you must now make sure that your WordPress website host is ready to receive that domain.

If you are hosting your WordPress website on SiteGround, as we recommend, you can do this very quickly. Follow this guide. If you host your website elsewhere, search for similar instructions on the host site or contact their support team and ask them to support you.

When you perform this step, you are basically done with the migration from Ghost to WordPress!

Remember that those server and domain changes take 48 hours to propagate, so don't be alarmed if you can't view your WordPress website by checking its website address via a web browser.

Epilogue

Hope you know how to migrate from Ghost to WordPress! As you are currently a member of the WordPress community, you want to learn more about the platform and learn how to use it effectively.