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How to Move From Squarespace to WordPress

Squarespace is a great platform but it’s not for everybody. It’s an all in one platform, meaning you are limited in what tools you can use. WordPress may have a bit of a steeper learning curve but you can do a lot more with it.

Which is why many people do end up moving from Squarespace to WordPress. And I’m guessing it’s what brought you to this post.

First, let me put you at ease, it’s not hard to make the move. You don’t need to hire someone, unless you want to, you can absolutely do this yourself. I know, because, I did, and now I’ve done it for clients as well.

So go get yourself some liquid courage and let’s do this.

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Step 1: In Order to Move From Squarespace to WordPress, You Need to First Get Your WordPress Hosting Set Up

Ideally you are moving to a self-hosted WordPress site. In order to do this you need to buy hosting. I use and recommend [earnist_link ref=”siteground” id=”2153″] SiteGround, it starts at just $3.95[/earnist_link] a month and has an excellent reputation unlike other hosting solutions (*cough* Bluehost* cough*).

After you purchase your hosting, follow the instructions to install WordPress on your hosting plan.

Related: Free Course – How to Start a WordPress Blog

Step 2: Head Over to Squarespace

You’ll need to export your content from Squarespace. Most of the content is easy to export, other content you’ll have to move over manually.

To export your blog and the basic pages:

Go to Settings > Advanced > Import/Export

Then click Export and select WordPress as the platform you want to export to.

Once Squarespace does its thing, a Download button will appear. Click it to download the file to your computer.

Step 3: Point Your Domain to Your New Host (SiteGround)

While you are moving your site over to WordPress it is easiest to keep your domain through Squarespace. Having the domain through Squarespace will cost you $20/year which isn’t far off the mark of other domain markets. You will cancel the hosting part of your Squarespace account.

Transferring a domain can cost upwards of a $100. So it’s easiest to just keep it where it is.

To point your Domain to your new hosting provider ([earnist_link ref=”siteground” id=”2153″]SiteGround[/earnist_link]) you will need to change the Name Servers the domain points to.

Go to Settings > Domains

If you have more than one domain, select the one you want to change

Then select “Advanced Settings”

You’ll see two tabs, you’ll want to select “NameServers”

Then Select “use custom nameservers”

You’ll then input SiteGrounds (or whichever host you’re using’s) nameservers which you can get from your SiteGround account, following this tutorial.

Step 4: Relax

While the nameserver change is usually pretty instantaneous, it can take up to 48 hours for the change to process. Additionally, even if you see it working and pointing to your shiny new WordPress site, it may fluctuate from working to not working in those first 48 hours.

So while you can work on getting your site ready to go during that time, to avoid frustration you might just want to walk away for a day.

Step 5: Import Your Squarespace Content to WordPress

Login to your WordPress site, you should have set this up when installing WordPress on your hosting plan.

Next I recommend installing the All Import Plugin. To do so:

  1. Go to Plugins
  2. Click “Add New”

3. Search: All Import

4. Select “Install Now”

5.  Click “Activate”

Once installed, go to the All Import Section and upload the file you downloaded from Squarespace.

You’re then going to want to do a check on all your content. Sometimes, images don’t quite translate and they need to be reuploaded/adjusting.

Additionally, not everything gets exported from Squarespace, per the Squarespace site, these will not export:

  • Product Pages
  • Folders
  • Index Pages
  • Event Pages
  • Album Pages
  • Cover Pages
  • More than one Blog Page
  • Audio Blocks
  • Video Blocks
  • Product Blocks
  • Drafts
  • Style changes
  • Custom CSS

So if you were using any of these things, you’ll need to get them manually set up on your WordPress site.

Step 6: Cancel Your Squarespace Account

Since you’re no long using Squarespace you don’t want to keep paying for it. Now, they will only issue refunds within 14 days of purchase. So it’s more about making sure you don’t automatically renew your account, which means you can either directly cancel or turn off auto-renewal.

Squarespace walks you through canceling your account in this tutorial.

Step 7: Design

Now that your content has moved over the next step is to make sure your site looks how you want, this is where WordPress can have a bit more of a learning curve. Investing in a paid theme will go a long way. Personally, I love having the entire Thrive Themes Membership, which gets you way more than just a bunch of themes.

Thrive Themes is designed to help websites convert, I use it on all my sites and am obsessed with it, I think it will be an especially good fit when moving from Squarespace.

Similar to Squarespace Thrive Themes has a drag and drop interface which could make the move to WordPress from Squarespace a little easier.

Related: How I Doubled My Opt-in Rate with Thrive Leads

Step 8: Keep Rocking and Rolling

Now that you’ve moved your site from Squarespace to WordPress all that’s left is to keep rocking and rolling with your content calendar or whatever it is you’re doing with your now WordPress based site.

If you have any questions, let me know in the comments!

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