Description
Wix has no button to export your blog, and its RSS feed only contains the first lines of each post. Importer for Wix reads your published Wix site the same way a search engine does, and recreates every blog post in WordPress.
You paste the address of your Wix site, check what was found, choose a few options and start. The import runs one post at a time with a progress bar and a live log, and you can pause it and resume it whenever you like.
What is imported
- Every blog post listed in your Wix site’s sitemap, including large blogs with several sitemap pages.
- The content as real WordPress blocks, ready to edit: paragraphs, headings, lists, quotes, images, galleries, separators, code, tables, buttons and embeds such as YouTube or Vimeo.
- Images and the featured image, downloaded to your Media Library in their original size.
- The original publish date and “last updated” date.
- Categories and tags. Missing ones are created with the same name and address as on Wix.
- The excerpt, when you wrote one on Wix.
- The address (slug) of each post, unchanged.
- The name of the original Wix author, kept with the post. Posts are assigned to the WordPress user you choose.
What is not imported
- Static pages, 301 redirects from your old Wix addresses, SEO titles and descriptions, and Wix authors as WordPress users. These are handled by Importer for Wix Pro, a separate plugin. This free plugin has no locked or limited features.
- Blog comments, Wix Stores products, bookings, forms, members, and your site design. A Wix design cannot be turned into a WordPress theme; you choose a theme in WordPress.
- Posts that are password-protected, members-only or unpublished, because they are not visible on the public site.
How to use it
- Go to Tools Import and click Run Importer under Wix.
- Enter the address of your Wix site, for example
https://www.example.comorhttps://username.wixsite.com/mysite, and click Find posts. - Check the summary: site name, number of blog posts found, how many were already imported, and whether the site’s robots.txt allows the import.
- Choose who the posts are assigned to, whether they are published or saved as drafts, whether images are downloaded, and whether posts imported before should be updated.
- Click Start import and keep the tab open. You can pause and resume at any time.
- When it is done, the summary lists every post with View and Edit links, plus any warnings, such as an image that could not be downloaded.
Built to be safe on any host
Each request to your server imports a single post or downloads a single image, so the import works on shared hosting without timeouts, even with large photos. The plugin only contacts your Wix site and Wix’s image servers, and never more than about two requests per second to your Wix site. It adds no tracking, loads no external scripts or fonts, and keeps no data after you uninstall it except the posts and images you imported.
External services
This plugin connects to third-party servers run by Wix.com Ltd. It only does so while you are using the importer screen, after you enter an address and click a button.
- The Wix site whose address you enter. Used to check that it is a Wix site and to read its robots.txt file, its sitemap files and the public pages of its blog posts. Requests are made when you click “Find posts” and while an import you started is running.
- static.wixstatic.com and video.wixstatic.com, Wix’s media servers. Used to download the images of the posts being imported, only while an import is running with “Download images to the Media Library” checked.
What is sent: an ordinary HTTP request for a public page or file, with the user agent Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; ImporterForWix/1.0; +https://wordpress.org/plugins/omar728-blog-migration-wix/). As with any web request, the receiving server sees your WordPress server’s IP address. Nothing else is sent: no personal data, no content from your WordPress site, no cookies and no login details.
Media left on Wix in your imported posts: videos hosted by Wix, and images that were not downloaded (because “Download images to the Media Library” was unchecked or a download failed), keep their Wix address in the post content. When someone views such a post, their browser loads that file from static.wixstatic.com or video.wixstatic.com, and Wix receives their IP address and browser details, as with any image or video embedded from another site. To avoid this, keep “Download images to the Media Library” checked, and replace Wix videos with copies uploaded to your Media Library. YouTube, Vimeo and other embeds are imported as standard WordPress embed blocks, which WordPress itself displays through the provider; the plugin does not contact them.
No other service is contacted by the plugin. It has no analytics, no telemetry and loads no external scripts, styles or fonts.
Wix Terms of Use: https://www.wix.com/about/terms-of-use
Wix Privacy Policy: https://www.wix.com/about/privacy
Wix is a trademark of Wix.com Ltd.; this plugin is not affiliated with or endorsed by Wix.
Screenshots
Installation
- In your WordPress dashboard, go to Plugins Add New Plugin, search for “Importer for Wix”, click Install Now, then Activate. You can also install it from Tools Import Wix Install Now.
- Go to Tools Import Wix Run Importer, or click Import from Wix under the plugin’s name on the Plugins screen.
- Follow the three steps on the screen.
You need a user role that can import content (Administrators can).
FAQ
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Does it change my Wix site?
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No. The plugin only reads the public pages of your site, like a visitor or a search engine. It never logs in to Wix and cannot change, delete or unpublish anything there. Your Wix site keeps working exactly as before.
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Is my Wix site’s robots.txt respected?
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Yes. Before reading any page, the plugin reads your site’s robots.txt file and follows the rules for its user agent
ImporterForWix, or the rules for all robots if there are none for it. If the rules forbid reading the blog, the import stops with a clear message and there is no way to force it. If it is your site, you can change the rules in Wix’s robots.txt editor and try again. -
What about big blogs?
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Big blogs are fine. Your browser drives the import one post at a time and each request to your server does a small amount of work, so there are no timeouts, whatever the number of posts. Keep the tab open while it runs; you can pause and resume. If the tab is closed or your connection drops, start the import again: posts already imported are skipped, so it picks up where it stopped.
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What if an image fails?
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The post is still imported. The image keeps loading from Wix, so the post looks complete, and the final summary lists it under Warnings. To try again, run the import again with “Update them with the current Wix version” checked. Images already downloaded are reused, not downloaded twice.
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Can I run it twice?
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Yes. Each imported post remembers its Wix address. On a second run, posts that were already imported are skipped, so nothing is duplicated, and only new posts are added. If you check “Update them with the current Wix version”, they are refreshed from Wix instead; edits you made to them in WordPress are then replaced.
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Will my old Wix links keep working?
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Each post keeps its Wix address (slug). If your domain moves to WordPress and your Wix posts were at
/post/my-title, go to Settings Permalinks, choose Custom Structure and enter/post/%postname%/, and those links keep working. Automatic 301 redirects for every old address, including pages, are part of Importer for Wix Pro. -
Which Wix sites work?
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Any published Wix site that uses the Wix Blog, on its own domain or on a
wixsite.comaddress. The site must be online while you import. -
Does it import my Wix pages?
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No, this free plugin imports blog posts. Pages are imported by Importer for Wix Pro.
Reviews
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Contributors & Developers
“omar728 Blog Migration for Wix” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
Contributors
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Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
Changelog
1.0.0
- First release: imports Wix blog posts with their content as blocks, images, featured image, dates, excerpt, categories, tags and slug, from the live Wix site.