Saturday, January 16, 2016
Evolution to Twenty Sixteen Theme, and What It Means for WordPress Users
People using WordPress for sometimes may know about these official themes releases named after years, namely Twenty Ten, Twenty Eleven, Twenty Twelve, Twenty Thirteen, Twenty Fourteen, Twenty Fifteen and Twenty Sixteen. To find out more just google those terms.
Most users try them for at least once, while they start using this cms. As of now more than 3.4 million websites have them installed actively. If you check popular themes, you will see top 6 themes are these official themes. In spite of so many marketplaces and premium stores with free templates in wp.org repository, these generic blog themes are most used.
Building a Restaurant Website With WordPress: Learning by Example
Restaurants need great websites. There's no getting around it. Yes, local advertising and word of mouth will get you a long way in the food business but potential customers expect a great browsing experience when they Google your restaurant's name.
And they expect specific features and information to be presented readily. For instance, the best restaurant sites are always mobile optimized, since many people will be searching for food on-the-go. A detailed and easy-to-navigate menu should also be a priority.
While there are plenty of articles about there about how to build a restaurant website, I thought it might be a better idea today to learn by example. What follows is a large-ish list of restaurants that use WordPress to present their businesses to the world. These are some of the most successful examples of restaurant, cafe, and food truck websites built using WordPress I could find. I've also detailed which themes and plugins they use where possible.
Before we dive into the list, however, let's first spend a little time discussing the features that can make or break a restaurant site and how WordPress can be used to make implementing them a little easier.
What a WordPress Restaurant Site Needs
I'm about to make some generalizations about restaurant websites. I hope you'll forgive me for that. But typically, most restaurant sites will require the following features:
A Menu
This is an obvious one. Nine times out of time site visitors are stopping by to check out what food you offer. Make sure your menu is readily accessible on all devices. That means it needs to be responsive, possibly be touch capable, and feature a font that's legible on all screen sizes. If you forego a restaurant-specific WordPress theme (or a custom design) you can opt for a plugin like the following:
Clear Contact Information
Restaurants will often display the location info in the header of the site so the visitor doesn't have to scroll to find it. You should include the address on a dedicated contact page as well, along with a map, driving directions, and parking info if applicable.
An "About" Page
Every site needs one of these, but for restaurants, this is where you can give a rundown of how you got your start. You can also talk about your chefs here.
Beautiful Photographs
People come for the food, so by all means, show it to them! You can integrate photos into the menu and/or feature them prominently in a header slider or dedicated gallery. Regardless, you need to feature high-quality images that do your food justice.
Reservation information
If you plan on accepting reservations, you need to have this capability built into your site. There are many tools that automate this process, including:
Social Media Integration
Word of mouth is still the most powerful marketing tactic you can have in your arsenal for promoting your restaurant. So you should make it easier for patrons to spread the word about your delicious food using social media. Social media comes standard in WordPress but you can always ramp it up a bit using plugins like the Publicize module in Jetpack, Social Warfare, or our very own Floating Social.
Online shop
While not a necessity, many restaurant websites feature a store as well. This small online shop can be used to sell merchandise related to your brand, like T-shirts, mugs, and possibly even canned or jarred foods you make.
Best WordPress-Based Restaurant Sites
Enough chit-chat, here's the list of restaurant sites you ought to check out if you're serious about creating your own and need some inspiration:
Boston Market
Boston Market is a chain of restaurants providing fast rotisserie chicken meals. Its website isn't perfect, but it does do a good job at making the food look enticing. It does this by putting all of the focus on the images. Navigation is tucked to the top and the bottom of the screen. It's readily accessible but doesn't pose a distraction to the pictures.
The site is built on a custom theme and uses Slider Revolution in part to make those eye-catching graphics possible. Some nice interactivity has also been added to menu items. For instance, on the pages for certain dishes, a hover effect is used that displays a tooltip style menu with additional sauce options.
Wandering Goat Coffee Co.
The Wandering Goat Coffee Co. is a locally owned coffee house located in Eugene, Oregon. The business is a combination of a coffee roaster, shop, and cafe and emphasizes organic blends. The website features a relatively simple design but does a good job at getting the company's most pressing details to the forefront. It has a parallax effect, distinct page sections, and prominently featured contact details.
Built on the X Theme developed by Themeco, this site uses several popular plugins like Slider Revolution, WooCommerce (with WooCommerce Menu Bar Cart), Visual Composer, and Contact Form 7. The included shop is simple and easy to navigate, there's elegant dropdown navigation up top, and plenty of fun imagery to maintain branding and keep visitors engaged.
Kogi BBQ
Though not technically a restaurant, the website for the Kogi BBQ food trucks totally counts for this list. It makes use of all the features WordPress has to offer by using eye-catching parallax effects, a unique slider, and a really cool schedule feature that presents graphics of each food truck and its location for each day of the week. There's also a nifty Twitter feed that's stylishly presented as its own section, a beautiful CTA for a newsletter signup, a Flickr photo feed, and a minimal but truly useful menu.
It's built on a custom theme using custom fonts and jQuery. It also uses several plugins including WordPress SEO, Google Analytics for WordPress, Gravity Forms, W3 Total Cache, and Flickr Photostream.
BurgerIJ
This burger joint has a truly stylish website that helps to highlight what matters most—the food! It immerses visitors straight away into full-width images thanks to a large slider. After that, there's a recent blog posts widget, followed by a masonry-style navigation. A stylish testimonials section is featured after that with even more photos and links. Primary navigation is also tucked away in a collapsible menu on the lefthand side of the screen for your convenience.
BurgerIJ is built on a custom theme and uses Siteorigin Panels to create responsive page layouts via a drag-and-drop interface. It also has a nifty 360-degree view of the restaurant's interior to further add to its appeal.
Muse Dining
The website for Muse Dining is engaging right from the start, offering a split screen presentation for its two locations—a restaurant and kitchen. Once you click through to either location, you're treated to simple navigation overlaid on a beautiful slideshow of food photography. Each page provides additional photography as well as content on the righthand side of the screen with accordion-style content to maintain a tidy appearance. Also, the menu is presented in a plain PDF for easy reading.
The site is built on a custom theme but I wasn't able to see specifically what plugins are used. Still, it provides an effective presentation for potential customers and that's all we can really ask for, right?
Las Margaritas
Las Margaritas is a Mexican restaurant and cantina that appears to offer a wide selection of authentic foods. The website uses parallax effect to add depth and dimension to the homepage, offsetting bright, bold images of food and fun with stylishly presented typography. Scrolling through the site is sort of an experience, taking you from one image to another of what deliciousness is held in store for you. There's even a video background detailing how their table-side guacamole is made.
The site is built on a custom theme and uses a handful of familiar plugins include Visual Composer, Jetpack, and WP Super Cache. There are plenty of design details here worth emulating, for sure.
Between the Bread
Between the Bread is a hospitality group that offers catering and event services. However, it also has grab-and-go eatery locations in New York. The website features some interesting hover effects, beautiful video backgrounds, stunning full-width images, and overlaid text to give the site some dimension. The menus are presented as JPEGs and the footer is well-organized with an email signup form and social media buttons. The homepage appears to be widgetized with gallery areas, a news and events section, and a slideshow.
The site was created with the Sage Starter Theme by Roots, which is built on HTML5, Bootstrap, and supports Sass.
True North Restaurant
Described as a New American Gastropub, True North Restaurant offers an new take on old school foods. When the site loads, you're greeted to a full-width image of the bar with a stylish logo on top. The menu is displayed as a simple list with quick links to each section on the lefthand side of the screen. There are some subtle parallax effects here as well as an engaging gallery with stylish hover effects.
The site uses a custom theme and several popular plugins to achieve its look including Contact Form 7, Photo Gallery, Slider Revolution, Tablepress, and Mega Menu.
Solage Calistoga
Solage Calistoga is a spa resort that just so happens to have a Michelin-starred restaurant on the premises, Solbar. The restaurant offers a mix of California foods and offers an atmospheric dining experience. Its website includes plenty of whitespace to maintain that calm and relaxed feeling and parallax effects to create interest. There's a click-through gallery slider, buttons with hover effects for the menu, embedded videos of the restaurant's signature dishes, and embedded Yelp reviews.
This site runs on a custom theme and uses several popular plugins including All-in-One SEO Pack, Open Table Widget, Gravity Forms, and W3 Total Cache.
Amalthea
Amalthea is an event caterer but its website is so engaging and downright interesting I had to include it here. It features parallax effects and sliders that swipe up and down to create a split screen look. It's a one-page design that you can then click through on each section to learn more about the topic at hand (oyster shucking, anyone?). Every page has fun details that ensure consistent branding, too.
This website is built on the Vigor theme by Edge Themes, specifically the "Artist" version for those interested. It uses several plugins to achieve its stylish effects including LayerSlider, Essential Grid, and Visual Composer.
Coldstream Brewery
The Coldstream Brewery has a fun logo and an interesting story, so it needed a good website to go along with it. Thankfully, its site delivers, with a minimal slider up top, sticky navigation, stylish typography, and distinct page sections that make for a pleasant browsing experience. Even the site's social integration is branded and compelling. The layout here is clean, minimal, and completely effective.
The brewery's site uses a custom theme and many plugins including WordPress SEO, Google Analytics for WordPress, WooCommerce, Accordion Slider, Fetch Tweets, and Sitemap.
American Prime Steakhouse
American Prime Steakhouse makes you hungry for steak from the moment you land on its site. With beautiful full-width images to catch your eye, the site pulls you right in to learning more about the restaurant's offerings. Speaking of, the menu is readily accessible. When clicked, the menu appears on top of that image slider, giving some dimension to the browsing experience. Most menu items are accompanied by a photo and you can click two other buttons to view sides and accompanying wines in a pop-out lefthand menu.
This site uses a custom theme built by ClickLab and though it's unclear what plugins it uses, it relies on popular features like a slider, overlaid pages, and social media integration.
Wahlburgers
The website for Wahlburgers is pretty straightforward but it looks like it's pulling off some real design tricks. The homepage is a stylish one-pager with enticing full-width images and super fun typography and graphical elements that draw the visitor in. The rest of the pages are straightforward. The menu is made from JPEGs but there is a text version for the visually impaired, as well as a downloadable PDF. The header and footer are both sticky, but the footer tucks neatly out of the way until you hover over it.
This site is also built on a custom theme and though no plugin information is available, it shows many popular features like hover effects, a downloadable menu, and full-width images.
Tavares
The Sao Paulo-based restaurant, Tavares has a truly interesting website. It's visually engaging right away. The full-width video background is immediately enticing and it's overlaid with large flat blocks of color and subtle text and even more appealing photographs of food. The menu and location map are all integrated on the homepage.
Here's another example of a custom theme being used to full effect. It's interesting, it's different, and unlike anything I've seen before. Of course, there are some design issues regarding text legibility in the footer area but I can look past this for the sake of the site's overall creativity.
Pen & Quill
I really love this website. There's just something about its simple layout, integration of creative parallax effects, large navigation items, and full-width photos that speaks to me. The main navigation consists of three large links that when clicked trigger parallax scroll effects. The menu is particularly impressive as you can continuously scroll through the options available (the more you scroll, the more sections of the menu appear). I'm also in love with the CTA in the About section, which features a very large email signup form that rolls over when hovered upon. Integration with Google Maps and Open Table round off this site nicely.
It uses a custom theme that's undeniably unique. The scroll and hover effects aren't new but I've never seen them presented in exactly this way before, making for a truly engaging user experience.
Zenzero
Here's another beautiful site to consider as you approach creating your own restaurant site. More full-width images entice visitors into eating at Zenzero and offer a delightful background for stylish typography and interesting menu hover effects. This site appears to be ideal for storytelling, and offers beautiful reading experiences on the About Us page. Other pages feature tabbed content, parallax effects, and stunning galleries. The menu is minimal and printable and there are some really great popup menu items in the footer that offer quick access to restaurant news, events, and operating hours.
This site is built on another custom theme that provides exactly the right feature set for a restaurant. It also uses Contact Form 7 for its contact page and the result is a clean layout that's intuitive for end users while still maintaining essential components of the site's overall design.
Ayza Wine & Chocolate Bar
A common theme among all of these restaurant sites seems to be the use of parallax effects. Ayza Wine & Chocolate Bar is no different and employs parallax with full-width images to stunning effect. As you scroll down the homepage, you're treated to up close photographs of delicious-looking food, wine, and sweets. Abbreviated navigation is sticky and at the top of the page but there is an expandable app-style menu that offers more options tucked in the upper righthand corner. Each menu type has its own page and is quite detailed. There are also pages for a gallery, special offers, directions, and private events.
This image-centric website uses a custom theme and a handful of popular plugins including Visual Composer, Ad Rotate Pro, and Instagram Grid.
Serving Up WordPress
While there are no doubt countless other fantastic WordPress-based restaurant sites out there, these are a few that have caught my eye in recent months that capture the imagination and provide examples to learn from. Large images, interesting navigation, and highly legible typography spell the difference between food sites that work and those that don't.
Have you come across any other examples of great WordPress-based restaurant sites? Let us know your thoughts below in the comments.
From Slow Site Performance To Super Speedy WordPress
There's a growing community of people in this country who are skipping out on the traditional roles our society sets out for us and making a life of their own. This means working remotely, often living in an RV or van, and traveling full-time. We started Wand’rly Magazine back in 2012, after having traveled for years like this ourselves, to help others who are looking to do the same.
Our website is our business, and for this business, it’s been WordPress from the start. I'm also a web designer and developer, though, and have used everything from Drupal to Joomla to hand coded sites, and WordPress has always just been so much more friendly to developers and authors than the alternatives.
We want our site to look great and to be accessible from anywhere and everywhere (and on all types of devices). We love big images and our layouts are often more complex than a typical WordPress site. That type of content can sometimes result in slower load times, unless our host is specifically tailored to taking advantage of how WordPress works.
With a previous host, we encountered many speed issues. They weren’t necessarily a “cheap shared host” either, but despite the higher costs, we were still seeing poor performance. In addition, getting in touch with support would sometimes take days and days while we waited for an initial response, requiring a few back and forths. We therefore lost traffic and 90 percent of our business model relies on having as much traffic as possible.
The No. 1 reason we switched to WP Engine’s managed WordPress hosting platform was our need for speed. We have to serve our site as quickly as possible. Since switching to WP Engine, our sessions and users are up almost 110 percent, and overall pageviews are up 88 percent.
While we've created additional content and certainly there are other factors that contribute to this, I have no doubt that the speed of our site contributed directly to this positive change.
We also tend to frequently change features of our site, testing what works and what doesn’t. Having the staging environment that WP Engine offers makes testing much easier for us.
Other features we use with WP Engine include CDN, Evercache, and SSL security…all of which were so much easier to get setup with WP Engine than any other host or plugin we've tried before.
In addition, the support has been the icing on the cake. With most hosting companies, you present a problem to them and they point you at a link on their website, which sometimes explains how to fix the issue. Or they say "that's out of scope" as far as what their service provides. With WP Engine, contacting support typically only takes a few minutes and the issue is always resolved within minutes.
Looking forward, we have plans to launch a WooCommerce store next year and there’s no doubt the same excellent service will make that a relatively easy addition. The support we receive puts a smile on our faces, but the speed and reliability of the platform just kills it.
With over fifteen years of web design and development experience, six of those while traveling full-time, Nathan is more concerned with beautiful experiences and telling tales than playing with server details. When he's not building the internet or traveling the world, he's on Instagram.
The post From Slow Site Performance To Super Speedy WordPress appeared first on WP Engine.
24 Must Have WordPress Plugins for Business Websites in 2016
Many of our users are business owners who often ask us for plugin suggestions. Having the right set of tools can help you take your business to the next level. In this article, we will share the must WordPress plugins for business websites in 2016.
1. OptinMonster
OptinMonster is the most popular conversion rate optimization software. It allows you to convert abandoning website visitors into email subscribers. If you want to grow your email list, then this is a must have WordPress plugin in 2016. Read these case studies to see how much success other businesses are having by using OptinMonster.
2. Gravity Forms
As a business owner, allowing your customers to contact you should be your top priority. Gravity Forms is the most popular contact form plugin for WordPress. You can use it to create any kind of forms like request a quote form, surveys, user submitted content, web directories, and more.
3. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is the most comprehensive and free website analytics tool in the market. In layman's terms it allows you to see where your visitors are coming from and what they are doing on your website.
You can then optimize your site accordingly to improve your earnings. We have detailed guides on how to install Google Analytics in WordPress and how to use Google Analytics.
4. MailChimp
MailChimp is the leading online email marketing service provider. It allows you to build an email lists and send emails to your subscribers.
It is by far the most beginner friendly platform, with quick and easy setup. See our ultimate guide to using MailChimp and WordPress.
5. Sucuri
Security is going to be a big concern for online business owners in 2016. Sucuri's web application firewall is probably one of the best protection you can get for your site.
They monitor and protect your site from DDoS, malware threats, XSS attacks, brute force attacks, and basically every other type of attack.
If you don't have a firewall on your website, then add one today.
6. BackupBuddy
While we're talking about security, there's no better security than having a reliable backup system.
As a business owner, you cannot afford to lose your business and customer data in case of a hardware failure or an attack on your host's servers. The first thing you should setup on all your WordPress sites is a backup plugin. We recommend using BackupBuddy because it is one of the most reliable and easiest way to backup and restore your WordPress sites with just a few clicks.
7. Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) is one of the most popular WordPress plugins. It allows you to optimize your WordPress site for search engines.
It not only helps you add meta tags, it optimizes your site as a whole. We have a complete step by step guide on how to install and setup WordPress SEO by Yoast.
8. W3 Total Cache
Speed is one of the most important SEO factors. Faster websites rank higher in Google, this means more visitors for your business website and more conversions.
W3 Total Cache allows you to serve compressed and cached files to your visitors. This reduces the load on your server and your website becomes faster. Take a look at our beginners guide on how to install and setup W3 Total Cache.
9. MaxCDN
Images and other static content on a website take the longest time to load. If you want to make your website even faster, then you will need to use a CDN to deliver your static files. MaxCDN is the most reliable CDN service, and it integrates easily with WordPress. See our guide on how to install and setup WordPress CDN solution MaxCDN on your site.
10. Envira Gallery
While you can easily create image galleries in WordPress without using a plugin, these galleries are fairly basic. Envira Gallery allows you to create beautiful responsive galleries in WordPress.
You can create multiple galleries, add them anywhere on your site, create albums, open images in lightbox popups, and much more. Take a look at our tutorial on how to easily create responsive WordPress image galleries with Envira.
11. Soliloquy
Sliders on your WordPress landing pages allow you to easily display your featured content, products, and announcements in a beautiful interactive way. Soliloquy is the best WordPress slider in the market. It allows you to easily create your own beautiful sliders and add them anywhere on your WordPress site. Check out our tutorial on how to create responsive WordPress slider with Soliloquy.
12. Buffer
Keeping your followers engaged on social media requires you to frequently post updates. Buffer allows you to easily schedule your posts for the entire day.
This allows you to keep your social media accounts active while you work on other things. See our tutorial on how to schedule WordPress posts for social media with BufferApp.
13. IFTTT
As a smart business owner, you need to make the most out of your time, but you cannot be everywhere all the time.
This is where IFTTT comes in. It allows you to put the internet to work for you. Take a look at our tutorial on how to automate WordPress and social media with IFTTT.
14. Quick and Easy FAQs
When launching a new product or website, you may need to add a FAQs section in WordPress. You can add a new page with all the frequently asked questions (FAQs), but in most cases FAQs grows as your product evolves and as your customer base grows.
By adding the FAQ section, you can significantly reduce your support overhead and improve conversion. Take a look at how to add a FAQs section in WordPress.
15. Insert Headers and Footers
While managing your WordPress sites, you may sometimes need to add code snippets to your WordPress site's header or footer. This means you will have to edit the theme files which could get messy and break up your WordPress theme. Insert Headers and Footer allows you to easily add code snippets to your WordPress site without editing your theme files. Take a look at our tutorial on how to add header and footer code in WordPress.
16. CSS Hero
WordPress themes rely on CSS for the visual appearance of your website. If you want to make customization to your theme, then you will have to learn CSS. This can be time consuming for a business owner.
CSS Hero is a WordPress plugin that allows you to customize any WordPress theme without writing a single line of code. Check out our review of how CSS Hero makes WordPress customization easy for more information.
17. Beaver Builder
As a business owner you may soon realize that placing things differently on your pages can result into more conversions and sales. But how do you create those landing pages without learning to code?
Beaver Builder is a powerful drag and drop page builder tool for WordPress. It allows you to easily create your own page layouts using a simple user interface. See our comparison of the best drag and drop page builders for WordPress for more information.
18. Google Apps for Work
Google Apps for Work is a suite of web applications like email, docs, spreadsheets, etc. Created by Google, this powerful suite of office applications is cheaper, easy to deploy, and hassle free. Most importantly, it allows you to use your own business domain name for emails.
19. Freshbooks
Freshbooks is a cloud based accounting software for professionals, freelancers, and agencies. It allows you to easily send invoices to clients, receive payments, and manage your finances. Take a look at our article about creating invoices for clients using WordPress.
20. SEMRush
As a business owner, you need data to find out what your competitors are doing for their websites. SEMRush allows you to look at the keywords where your competitors are ranking. You can checkout their paid keywords as well as their organic traffic. This way you can optimize your own content and marketing strategy. Also checkout our list of best WordPress SEO plugins and tools that you should use.
21. All in One Schema.org Rich Snippets
Rich Snippets are special markup that you can add to your content and describe your content more precisely to search engines. This information is then used by search engines to show your content differently. For example, star ratings below your product listings, maps when someone searches for your business, and so on. All in One Schema.org rich snippets plugin provides you an easy user interface to generate that markup and use it in your WordPress posts and pages.
Check our guide on how to add rich snippets in WordPress.
22. BirchPress
If you need a solution for your business website where your users can book and pay for appointments, then BirchPress is the solution for you. It allows you to easily add a complete online booking system to your WordPress site.
You may also want to see our guide on 5 best WordPress appointment and booking plugins.
23. Testimonials Widget
Testimonials allow you to showcase your past clients and their feedback about your services of products. People love to hear what others have to say about your business. It helps you gain trust and build lasting relationships with your clients. Testimonials Widgets makes it super simple to add customer testimonials on your WordPress site.
24. Slack
Slack is a team management, productivity and communication tool. We use it to communicate with our team spread across different timezones and locations. Slack is more convenient than email, and it can integrate with tons of other online tools you may be using. See our guide on how to integrate Slack with WordPress for more information.
We hope this article helped you find some of the best WordPress plugins for your business website. You may also want to take a look at our guide on 25 most common WordPress mistakes that you want to avoid.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
The post 24 Must Have WordPress Plugins for Business Websites in 2016 appeared first on WPBeginner.
Help Us Improve the WPMU DEV Blog: UX Survey
We've made some big changes to our website over the past year, but we're not done yet – and we need your help.
Since joining the WPMU DEV team as UX Lead Designer last year, I've been working to improve our website and products so they're awesome for folks like you to use.
With that in mind, we're re-thinking the user experience of our blog and I'm keen to hear about how you use it. What do you think of the fonts and colors? Do you find the blog easy to read and navigate? What suggestions to you have to improve usability?
If you've got a minute handy, fill in the five-question survey below and let me know what you think. Your feedback will directly influence the changes we make.
Thanks for helping us out!
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Moving Your Blogger / Tumblr / LiveJournal / Movable Type Blog to WordPress
If you're moving your website or blog to WordPress, you'll be looking for as many shortcuts as possible to make the process easy.
Unless you're planning a complete rebuild, there will probably be content you want to move across, like posts and images. This could also be a few static pages or it could be hundreds of blog posts going back years. The good news is that WordPress makes it easy to import content from other platforms.
In this post, I'll show you how to import from the platforms that WordPress provides importer tools for, including Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad and Movable Type, Tumblr, and even other WordPress sites.
Importing Content: The Options
WordPress come with built-in import tools for a number of platforms, as you can see in the screenshot below:
These are:
- Blogger
- LiveJournal
- Movable Type and TypePad
- Tumblr
- WordPress itself
So let's take a look at how to import content from each of these platforms, and see how close the end results are to the original site.
Moving from Blogger to WordPress
I created a dummy blog on Blogger to export to WordPress. Here it is:
The blog has two posts (one with an image) and one page. There are two steps to importing it to WordPress:
- Create an XML file from Blogger and download it to your computer
- Import the XML file to WordPress suing the importer plugin.
Let's start by doing the export from Blogger.
Creating an XML File in Blogger
In Blogger, click on Settings > Other in the admin menu on the left.
In the screen that appears, click the Export blog link at the top:
A popup window will appear with information about the export process. Click the Download Blog link.
This will download an XML file to your computer. Save it somewhere you can find it again.
Importing to WordPress
In WordPress, go to Tools > Import and click on Blogger.
This prompts you to install the Blogger import plugin:
Click the Install Now button to install the plugin, then click the Activate Plugin & Rub Importer link to import your Blogger blog.
Click the Choose File button and select the XML file you just downloaded from Blogger, then click the Upload file and import button.
WordPress will ask you whether you want to assign posts from your blog to an existing user on your WordPress site or create a new user. I'll assign posts to my own existing user account. Once you've selected the user, click the Submit button:
WordPress will import your posts.
Here's how my site looks now using WordPress:
Unfortunately, it hasn't imported any pages or images, but all of my posts are there. You'll have to download all of your images from Blogger (or find them on your computer) and re-upload them to WordPress.
Moving LiveJournal to WordPress
Next, let's take a look at importing from LiveJournal. Again, I've created a dummy site to export to WordPress.
Importing from LiveJournal is a one-step process: instead of uploading an XML file, you input your user credentials when importing, and WordPress uses the LiveJournal API to import your posts. Very easy.
Firstly, you'll need to install the LiveJournal importer. Go to Tools > Import and click on LiveJournal to see the plugin installation screen:
Click on Install Now and then once the plugin's installed, click the Activate Plugin & Run Importer link.
Instead of importing an XML file, the plugin interacts with the LiveJournal API to import your content, so you'll need to provide details of your LiveJournal account:
Type in your LiveJournal username and password and click the Connect to LiveJournal and Import button.
WordPress will import your posts for you. For me, it's also imported a private post called Welcome to LiveJournal, which won't be visible to visitors to my blog.
Here's how my site looks now on WordPress with the posts imported:
The importer has imported links to images from the original LiveJournal site, but it hasn't actually created media files for them. It's a good idea to have your images stored on your new WordPress site rather than on an old site you no longer maintain, so you'll need to upload media files to your new site. At the same time, you can fix any issues with image alignment.
Moving from TypePad and Movable Type to WordPress
Both Movable Type and TypePad use the same importer, so here I'll demonstrate it with a TypePad blog. Here's the dummy blog I've created:
Importing from Movable Type or TypePad is a two-step process:
- Export the contents of your blog to a text file which is downloaded to your computer
- Import the text file to WordPress
Let's start with the export.
1. Exporting a TypePad Blog
In TypePad, click on Settings in the admin tabs at the top of the admin screens, and then select Import/Export from the menu on the left:
Click the Export button followed by the Download link.
This will open a new window in your browser with the contents of the text file:
In your browser, save the window as a file (in Chrome, I clicked File > Save Page As…). Save this file somewhere you can find it on your computer – it will be a text file.
Note: If you're exporting from Movable Type, follow the instructions on the Movable Type website to create a download file. Then follow the instructions below.
2. Importing using the TypePad Importer
To import from TypePad, you'll need to install the Movable Type and TypePad importer.Go to
Go to Tools > Import and click on Movable Type and TypePad to see the plugin installer:
Click on the Install Now button, then the Activate Plugin & Run Importer link.
Click the Choose File button and select the text file you just downloaded from TypePad, then click the Upload file and import button.
WordPress will ask you whether you want to assign posts from your blog to an existing user on your WordPress site or create a new user. I'll assign posts to my existing user account.
Once you've selected the user, click the Submit button:
WordPress will get on with importing your posts.
Here's how my site looks in WordPress now:
It's successfully imported both of my posts and the image has its alignment set up correctly.
However the image hasn't been imported as a new media file in my new site: instead, the image is showing up using a link to my old TypePad site. You'll need to replace this with a newly uploaded image in your new site, as it's not a good idea to rely on a site you're no longer maintaining for your images.
Importing from Tumblr to WordPress
Tumblr is slightly different from the other platforms. It's designed to work with different post formats, which equate to post formats in WordPress. When you import a Tumblr blog to WordPress, your posts will have the equivalent post formats in your new WordPress site.
When you import a Tumblr blog to WordPress, your posts will have the equivalent post formats in your new WordPress site.
I've set up a dummy Tumblr site with a couple types of content in it and will import that.
Importing from Tumblr is a two-stage process:
- Create an application in Tumblr which will provide you with the authorisation keys you need for your import
- Import your Tumblr blog to WordPress using the importer
Let's start by creating the application.
1. Creating an Application in Tumblr
When you're logged into Tumblr, go to the Tumblr application page:
Click the Register Application button.
Fill out the following fields:
- Application Name – give your application a unique name. I'm using rmccollin blog export
- Application Website – use the URL to your new WordPress site
- Application description – it doesn't matter what you enter here
- Administrative contact email – this will be auto-populated
- Default Callback URL – again, use your new site's URL
You can leave the rest of the fields blank.
Tick the I'm not a robot checkbox and click the Register button.
Tumblr will provide you with an OAuth key and a secret key (which you can view by clicking the Show secret key link). Make a note of these or keep this window open while you start the import to WordPress.
2. Importing to WordPress
To import from Tumblr to WordPress, start by installing the Tumblr importer plugin. Go to Tools > Import and click Tumblr to access the plugin installer:
Click on Install Now, then on the Activate Plugin & Run Importer link.
WordPress will prompt you for your OAuth key and secret key from Tumblr:
Copy your OAuth and secret keys from the application you already created in Tumblr. Click the Connect to Tumblr button.
WordPress will connect to Tumblr and show you a screen to tell you this has worked, To continue the import, click the Authorize the Application button, followed by the Allow button when you see the next prompt.
You'll then see a screen with details of the blog you're about to import:
Click the Import this blog button.
When the import is complete you'll see a Finished! notification where the Import this blog button was.
Here's how my site now looks in WordPress:
The import went nicely. My posts have imported as normal posts and the quote has imported as a post with the Quote post format. But once again the image hasn't imported properly, instead it's showing up using a link to my old Tumblr site. You'll need to replace this with a new uploaded image in your new site, as it's not a good idea to rely on a site you're no longer maintaining for your images.
Importing from Another WordPress Site to WordPress
The final option is to import content from another WordPress site. To do this you'll need to follow two steps:
- Export content from the first site using the built-in exporter
- Install and activate any plugins that provide custom post types or taxonomies on your new site
- Import the XML file to your new site using the importer plugin
Using the export tool is a simple way to export the content from your old site to a new one without having to worry about moving databases. If you're moving from wordpress.com to a self-hosted site, this is the way to do it. It will export all of your content types, including posts, pages, images and any custom post types you've got on your site. However, it won't import your widgets and site settings.
Note: If you want to import widgets from an old site, use the Widget Importer & Exporter plugin, which you'll need to install on both sites. Make sure you install and activate any plugins that provide widgets on your new site before running the import.
1. Exporting from the Old WordPress Site
First you need to export the content from your old site, which will create an XML file that you'll download.
In your old site, go to Tools > Export to access the exporter page:
Select the post types you want to export, or simply select All content to export everything. Click the Download Export File button.
Save your export file somewhere on your computer so you can find it again.
2. Installing and Activating Plugins
If your old site has any content in addition to posts, pages and media, you'll need to make sure your new site has those post types registered before importing your content.
Make sure you've got all the same plugins installed and activated on your new site. Install and activate the same theme too, as some themes include post types.
Check between your old and new sites – the admin menus should look the same, with the same post types and taxonomies available.
3. Importing to Your New WordPress Site
The final step is to import your content to the new site. Go to Tools > Import and click on WordPress to access the importer installation screen:
Click the Install Now button and then the Activate Plugin & Run Importer link.
You'll be prompted to select the XML file to upload. Select the file you already downloaded when exporting from your old site. Click the Upload file and import button.
Next you'll be asked which author the imported posts should be assigned to. Select your own user account or import the user from the old site. Click the checkbox to import images, then click the Submit button:
WordPress will import your posts, pages, and any other content types. It will also import the images from your old site to your new one, as items in your media library.
Importing to WordPress is Easy
Hopefully, this post has helped you to prepare for moving your old site to WordPress from an alternative blogging platform or an old WordPress site. The automated tools that WordPress provides make this process really quick and easy.
The only thing you need to be aware of is that the tools just import code. Apart from the WordPress importer, they don't import images to your new site but display them using links to your old site. Once you've imported your content you'll need to replace those images with new ones uploaded to your site.
Good luck with your new WordPress site!
Have you used any alternative import tools for other platforms? Share your experiences in the comments below. If you have any questions about moving to WordPress, feel free to ask away in the comments, too.
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