WordPress migration

Send a database dump and the uploads directory. We migrate it and print the site to static.

Migration is done for you. You send two things, we run the import, you review the result before anything changes at your domain.

01What we need

Two artefacts, both of which your host can produce:

A dump of the WordPress database (a mysqldump file is ideal).
The wp-content/uploads directory, as an archive.

We do not need a plugin installed, admin access to your live site, or a working REST API. The importer reads the database and the filesystem directly. That is deliberate: the sites most worth moving are usually the ones whose hosting has stopped cooperating.

02What comes across

Posts and pages with their published dates and authors, categories and tags, the media library with its metadata, menus, users and their roles, and your permalink structure. Custom fields map onto the equivalent field model rather than being flattened into the body.

What does not come across is anything that was PHP: plugins, shortcodes that a plugin used to expand, and theme templates. offloadcms has no plugin system — that is a design choice, not a gap being filled later — so any behaviour that lived in a plugin needs an equivalent on this side or a decision to drop it. We will tell you which ones we hit.

03Your old URLs keep working

The import generates redirects from the WordPress URL structure to the new one, so links and search results that point at the old site land in the right place instead of a 404. Feed URLs are redirected too.

One honest caveat worth knowing up front: WordPress buckets dated archive URLs in the site's local timezone, and a date-based URL can therefore differ by a day from a naive conversion. We check the dated archives specifically rather than assuming.

04Reviewing and cutting over

The migrated site goes live on a temporary address first, so you can read it before your domain points anywhere new. When it looks right, the cut-over is a guided step in the dashboard that checks the target first and keeps a snapshot of the DNS it replaced, so a revert is one click rather than an archaeology exercise.

05Starting one

Tell us about the site — roughly how many posts, whether it uses custom fields or WooCommerce, and what your deadline looks like. We will tell you honestly whether it is a good fit before anyone sends a database.

Prefer to understand the machinery first? The docs cover what a publish produces and how the content model maps.