Upload an old locally saved site to brand new WP site?
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Hello there — I’m a novice when it comes to web management, and had a nonprofit client ask me to download their website so that the materials could be later re-uploaded after a contract was switched over. Long story short, I was able to save the site locally, thanks to the SiteSucker app.
(I’m a Mac user, Catalina iOS)
I’m now in the position of needing to reupload all of that content to a brand new wordpress site. I feel that I’m in Developer territory and feel out of my depth. I’ve hit a bunch of snags.
1) I need to have a CMS, so am hoping to use WordPress for that. I know I could upload the old website files to a host/server’s public_html folder, but this solution won’t allow me and my teammates to make easy ongoing edits (without need of a developer each time). I’d like to stick to WordPress for both hosting and CMS!
2) When I used SiteSucker to save the old website locally (before my client deleted the site at their contract end — weird, i know), it saved as HTML files, and not XML. This is the part that has been really hard for me to upload things easily and by bulk. Research led me to “http://htmltowordpress.io/” which seemed to be the best solution to convert the entire html site to wordpress, but it seems that site is now gone.
3) I’m not sure the necessary steps to take upload all of these html files while also keeping the old theme that the previous site used. (I’m not sure where in the html files to find what theme they used)
Am I out of luck and should just start from scratch, using the old HTML files just as reference? Any help would be appreciated!
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hi there,
Is the old site still online and are you able to share the URL by any chance?
The forum you’re posting to here is specifically for the hosting provider, WordPress.com, so my answers below assumes you want to host the new site here with us.
If you want to use the open source version of WordPress instead at another host, the better place to ask for advice is the WordPress.org community forums, as those are the people who make that version of WordPress:
https://wordpress.org/support/forums/
1) I need to have a CMS, so am hoping to use WordPress for that. I know I could upload the old website files to a host/server’s public_html folder, but this solution won’t allow me and my teammates to make easy ongoing edits (without need of a developer each time). I’d like to stick to WordPress for both hosting and CMS!
A WordPress website doesn’t have a
public_htmlfolder, because WordPress doesn’t use HTML files. The HTML code for a WordPress site is generated server-side using PHP, with the actual content of posts and pages being stored separately in a SQL database.So there’s no way to upload HTML content files to a WordPress site directly, regardless whether it’s hosted with us or using the open source version at another host.
2) When I used SiteSucker to save the old website locally (before my client deleted the site at their contract end — weird, i know), it saved as HTML files, and not XML. This is the part that has been really hard for me to upload things easily and by bulk. Research led me to “http://htmltowordpress.io/” which seemed to be the best solution to convert the entire html site to wordpress, but it seems that site is now gone.
As site content is stored in a database, you need either a XML export file correctly formatted for the WordPress importer, or a SQL database containing the data (though not possible on WordPress.com), to import it to a WordPress site. But I’m afraid I don’t know of any way to convert static HTML files into either XML or a SQL database.
In our import guide for WordPress.com at https://transferto.wordpress.com/drag-and-drophtml-site-builders/ we explain how to do this manually, which is the only reliable way to do this that I know of.
I did a quick search online and found an article at https://kinsta.com/blog/html-to-wordpress/#the-best-html-to-wordpress-converter-plugin-options-and-other-tools that lists a number of plugins that might work. But to use any of those here on WordPress.com you’d need to be on our Business Plan, and then there’s no guarantee that it will work, so personally I’d stick with manual.
3) I’m not sure the necessary steps to take upload all of these html files while also keeping the old theme that the previous site used. (I’m not sure where in the html files to find what theme they used)
If the old site wasn’t built with WordPress, and using a WordPress theme, you won’t be able to use the same theme either, again because WordPress themes are written in PHP, rather than HTML, and need to be put together in a specific way to work correctly.
I found another article at https://www.elegantthemes.com/blog/tips-tricks/converting-html-sites-to-wordpress-sites that explains how you can make a simple custom WordPress theme based on the CSS and HTML of a non-WordPress site. But using a custom theme like that on WordPress.com will require our Business Plan, and we’re not able to help with custom theme development like that.
Am I out of luck and should just start from scratch, using the old HTML files just as reference?
Essentially this is the crux of it, I think. While there are some options as described in the articles I linked to above, they’re not guaranteed to work, and will likely end up being much more trouble that it’s worth.
I recommend that you start with a new WordPress.com site, select an existing theme, and then recreate your content here by copying it from the files you have. While it might initially take longer to set up depending on the amount of content we’re speaking of, long term you’ll end up with a site that’s more stable and easier to manage going forward.
I know that’s not the answer you were looking for, but I hope it helps. Let us know if you have any other questions.
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A WordPress website doesn’t have a public_html folder
Just a slight correction here:
If you’re on a Apache server, your WordPress installation will like be inside a
public_htmlfolder. But that folder is part of the server configuration, not part of WordPress. By adding HTML files to that folder, you’re essentially adding them to the root directory of your WordPress site.As far as I know, doing that won’t actually do anything, though, unless you also add rules to your server configuration mapping those files to their own subdomains or subdirectories on the domain where they can be accessed.
But that’s not possible here on WordPress.com at all – you’d only be able to do this if you’re hosting WordPress on your own server or a non-managed host.
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