Moving from Wix to WordPress: export limits, /post/ URLs and redirects
Moving from Wix to WordPress is a rebuild more than an import. Wix's help center says blog posts cannot be exported to other platforms, pages have no export either, and only Wix Stores products leave as a CSV file. So you recreate the content in WordPress, keep each URL as close to the Wix version as the permalink settings allow, and add a 301 on the WordPress side for every address that changes. Wix's own URL Redirect Manager stops mattering the moment your domain resolves to the new host.
One case has no fix: a site that only ever lived on a free username.wixsite.com address cannot redirect off Wix, so its new domain starts from zero in search.
What leaves Wix, and in what form
Each part of a Wix site exits by a different door, so inventory them before you build anything:
- Pages have no export. Copy the text into WordPress pages, or rebuild the layouts in your theme or page builder.
- Blog posts also have no export. You can save the feed at
/blog-feed.xmland run it through WordPress's RSS importer (Tools → Import → RSS), but that feed lists only the 20 newest posts and may not carry the full body, so compare one imported post with the live version before trusting the rest. Anything older is copy and paste. - Wix Stores products export from the Products list (More Actions → Export) as a CSV, except digital products. WooCommerce's built-in importer at Products → Import reads it once you map Wix's column names onto WooCommerce fields.
- SEO titles, meta descriptions and alt text travel through none of these routes. Open the SEO panel of every page and post that earns traffic and record its title and description in the spreadsheet you will use for redirects.
- Images are served from
static.wixstatic.comand stop loading when the site closes. Download the originals and upload them to the media library instead of hotlinking.
Bookings, member areas, forms and Wix apps have no file to move at all. Choose WordPress plugins for them and rebuild.
Matching Wix paths inside WordPress
Wix forces a prefix onto blog and store URLs. WordPress can imitate most of them, which cuts the number of redirects you need:
| Wix URL | WordPress default | Closer match you can set |
|---|---|---|
/post/lemon-tart | /lemon-tart/ | Custom permalink /post/%postname%/ |
/product-page/linen-apron | /product/linen-apron/ | WooCommerce custom product base /product-page/ |
/blog/categories/desserts | /category/desserts/ | Redirect it, or rebuild fewer categories |
/about | /about/ | Same slug; WordPress adds the slash itself |
With the /post/%postname%/ structure under Settings → Permalinks, a post imported with the same slug differs from its Wix address only by the trailing slash, and WordPress's canonical redirect adds that for you. If you renamed the prefix in Wix (to /articles/, for example), use the renamed version. A plain /%postname%/ structure also works; it just means one explicit redirect per post.
Turning Wix's sitemaps into a redirect map
Wix publishes a sitemap index at /sitemap.xml that points to one child sitemap per content type, such as pages-sitemap.xml, blog-posts-sitemap.xml and store-products-sitemap.xml. Save every <loc> from them into column A of a spreadsheet. Then export landing pages from Search Console's Performance report for the full 16 months it keeps, because Google still sends visits to URLs a sitemap has dropped. Column B gets the WordPress address for each row.
DNS decides where those rules must run. Once the domain points at your WordPress host, nothing on Wix's servers answers requests, so every rule has to live on WordPress or the server in front of it. For a few hundred rows, add them as 301s in Hydrogen SEO's Redirection Manager. For longer lists, paste both columns into the redirect rule generator to get Apache or nginx rules and a warning for any row that points at another old URL. Load the rules on a staging copy first and test a sample.
The cutover and what rankings do
Keep the Wix premium plan until WordPress is live on your domain and tested; cancel first and visitors land on a Wix placeholder. A domain bought through Wix can stay registered there while you change its DNS records to the new host, or you can transfer it to another registrar. ICANN rules block transfers for 60 days after a registration or previous transfer, so check that date early.
The domain is not changing, so Search Console needs no Change of Address. Google recrawls known URLs, finds new HTML on the ones you matched, and follows your 301s on the rest. Expect several weeks of ranking movement while that happens. A page that drops and stays down usually has a missing redirect, a redirect to a loosely related page, or content that got thinner in the rebuild, and all three are fixable on your side.
First week on WordPress
- Run every URL in column A through a crawler or
curl -sIand confirm a single 301 hop to a page that returns 200. - Submit the sitemap Hydrogen SEO generates (XML sitemaps) in Search Console.
- Search post content for
wixstatic.comand/post/links; pasted Wix text often keeps both. Hydrogen SEO's site audit lists broken internal links left behind. - Enter the recorded SEO titles and descriptions in each post's SEO Settings sheet. For pages that never had custom ones, Hydrogen AI can draft them if you connect a free hydrogenseo.com account.
- Check the Page indexing report weekly and redirect any old URL that appears under Not found (404).
Common questions
Can I keep /post/ in my blog URLs after leaving Wix?
Yes. Set a custom permalink structure of /post/%postname%/ in Settings, Permalinks. Posts that keep their Wix slug then differ only by the trailing slash, which WordPress adds with its own redirect.
Does the Wix URL Redirect Manager keep working after I move?
No. Those rules run on Wix's servers, so they stop applying once your domain points somewhere else. Recreate any rule you still need on WordPress, pointing straight at the final URL.
Is there a plugin that imports a whole Wix site?
We are not aware of one we can recommend. Wix says blog posts cannot be exported, so tools that promise a full import generally copy the public pages. Check their output closely, especially images and formatting.
How long before rankings settle after a Wix move?
Usually a few weeks, depending on how often Google crawls the site. Pages with a correct one-hop 301 and content at least as good as before tend to return to where they were.