Transfer existing website from HTML to wordpress

  • Unknown's avatar
    rossodigital · Member ·

    I’ve been asked by a business contact to move their website from their current HTML format to WordPress. I’m fairly confident in maintaining a company website and also to build a website but never had to move an existing site. Is there a way to build the website first and then connect the domain afterwards as we wouldn’t want any downtime for the existing site?

  • kokkieh · Staff ·

    Hi there,

    If you plan to make the new site on WordPress.com, once you create a site here we automatically register a free *.wordpress.com subdomain for use with that site. So you can build your site at that address, and only add the domain when you’re ready.

    If you’re planning to use the open source WordPress software, find out if the hosting provider you want to use offer staging domains for sites. Our two recommended hosts, Pressable and Bluehost, both offer staging domains that you can use for development purposes until connecting the actual domain.

    Hosting

    Regardless whether you use WordPress.com or go self-hosted, there’s no way to just import a HTML-based site, so you will need to manually copy-paste any existing content into new posts and pages on the WordPress site.

    We have a guide for importing that type of site here:

    https://transferto.wordpress.com/drag-and-drophtml-site-builders/

  • Unknown's avatar
    rossodigital · Member ·

    Thanks for that! I’m fine with building the website in general from scratch. I’ve already got the wordpress business plan so once ready can redirect the existing domain to the new wordpress site. My only issue now is that I can’t upload the avada theme I purchased and start building the site as it requires a custom domain to be allowed do upload themes. I can’t redirect the old website’s DNS servers to the new wordpress site though as that would mean we’d have to take the website down while I’m building it…

    Any tips on that?

  • Unknown's avatar
    gemmacevans · Member ·

    Hi donrosso,

    I see you chatted with one of our Happiness Engineers earlier today and they helped with the domain. Avada is now active on your site, which is great to see! If need any further help, you’re welcome to start a new chat :)

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