How to Move a Weebly Site to WordPress

There is no automatic importer that turns a Weebly site into a WordPress site, so moving from Weebly to WordPress is a guided manual rebuild. This deep-dive walks you through doing it on Ultra Web Hosting: installing WordPress with one click, picking a theme and an optional drag-and-drop page builder that feels like Weebly, recreating your pages and blog posts, rebuilding forms and stores, and going live from a staging subdomain without downtime. With Weebly winding down in 67 countries and coasting everywhere else, WordPress gives you a fully owned, portable site you never have to migrate off again.

01. Why WordPress Is the Best Weebly Replacement

WordPress powers a huge share of the web because it hits a sweet spot Weebly never could: it is easy enough for non-developers, yet you own every file and can move it anywhere. For a Weebly refugee it checks all the boxes:

• You own your content - Every page, image, and post lives on your hosting account, not inside a closed platform that can change its terms or exit your country
• Weebly-like editing - Page builder plugins like Elementor and Beaver Builder give you the same drag-and-drop, what-you-see-is-what-you-get experience you had on Weebly, without writing code
• Portable and standard - WordPress runs on virtually any host. If you ever want to move, you take your whole site with you - no lock-in
• Active development - Unlike Weebly, WordPress ships regular updates, has a massive theme and plugin ecosystem, and a large community answering questions

02. There Is No One-Click Weebly-to-WordPress Importer

Set your expectations up front: there is no plugin or service that logs into Weebly, sucks out your site, and rebuilds it perfectly in WordPress. This is a guided manual rebuild, and that is a limitation of Weebly, not WordPress.

Weebly is a closed builder. It stores your content in its own proprietary database and renders it through its own templating system. The public export you can download is a folder of flattened static HTML, images, and CSS - not structured content that another platform can cleanly map into pages, posts, categories, and menus. That is why the rebuild is manual:

• Pages - You copy the text and re-upload the images, then lay each page out again in WordPress
• Blog posts - Copy-paste for a handful; an RSS import for a larger blog (covered in Section 07)
• Forms, stores, and widgets - These are tied to Weebly's backend and must be rebuilt with WordPress plugins

03. Before You Start: Export and Inventory

Two things need to be done before you touch WordPress: get a complete local copy of your Weebly content, and make a list of everything you have to recreate.

1. Download your Weebly archive - In the Weebly editor, go to Settings > General > Archive and download the ZIP. This gives you the static HTML, images, and CSS for your pages
2. Crawl your live site - The archive often skips individual blog posts, so also run a desktop crawler like HTTrack (Windows/Linux) or SiteSucker (macOS) against your published site to capture every post page and its images
3. Inventory your content - Make a simple list (a spreadsheet is ideal): every page, every blog post, every form, and every product. This is your rebuild checklist and, later, your URL map for redirects

04. Step 1: Install WordPress on Ultra

The fastest way to get WordPress running on your Ultra Web Hosting account is the one-click Softaculous installer in cPanel. It sets up the database, the WordPress files, and your admin login in a couple of minutes.

1. Log in to cPanel for your hosting account
2. Open Softaculous Apps Installer and choose WordPress
3. Click Install and pick where to install it. For a live rebuild, install into a staging subdomain like dev.yourdomain.com (see Section 08) so your Weebly site stays live while you build
4. Set your admin username and a strong password - avoid the default admin username for security
5. Finish the install and log in at yourdomain.com/wp-admin (or the staging subdomain equivalent)

05. Step 2: Pick a Theme and (Optionally) a Page Builder

Your theme sets the overall look of your site; a page builder gives you the drag-and-drop editing you are used to from Weebly. You can use just a theme, or a theme plus a builder for full visual control.

Choosing a theme

• Browse Appearance > Themes > Add New in your WordPress dashboard
• Pick a clean, well-reviewed, actively updated theme that roughly matches the layout you want (many are free)
• Modern block themes work directly with the built-in WordPress block editor, so you may not need a separate builder at all for a simple site

Adding a page builder for Weebly-style editing

If you loved dragging blocks around on Weebly, install a page builder plugin under Plugins > Add New:

• Elementor (free) - The most popular drag-and-drop builder. Real-time visual editing, huge widget library, works with most themes
• Beaver Builder (free) - A stable, beginner-friendly alternative with a clean interface

06. Step 3: Recreate Your Pages

With WordPress installed and a theme or builder chosen, rebuild your core pages one at a time using the content from your Weebly backup.

1. Create the page - In WordPress, go to Pages > Add New and give it the same title as the Weebly page (Home, About, Services, Contact, and so on)
2. Copy the text - Open the matching file from your Weebly archive, copy the body text, and paste it into the WordPress editor. Paste as plain text where possible to avoid dragging in Weebly's markup, then re-apply headings and formatting
3. Re-upload images - Add each image to the Media Library (do not hotlink from Weebly's servers, which will go away). Pull the originals from your archive or crawl so you get full-resolution files
4. Rebuild the layout - Recreate columns, buttons, galleries, and sections using the block editor or your page builder. This is where a builder shines for matching your old Weebly look
5. Set your homepage - Under Settings > Reading, set a static front page if your Weebly home was a designed landing page rather than a blog feed
6. Build your menu - Under Appearance > Menus, recreate your navigation and assign it to the theme's primary menu location

07. Step 4: Move Your Blog Posts

How you move your blog depends on how many posts you have.

A handful of posts: copy-paste

For a small blog, the simplest path is to recreate each post by hand. Go to Posts > Add New, copy the title and body from your crawl or archive, re-upload the images to the Media Library, and publish. Set the original publish date under the post's Publish settings so your archive stays chronological.

A larger blog: RSS import

If your Weebly blog is still live, it exposes an RSS feed (usually at a URL ending in /1/feed or similar). WordPress can pull posts from a feed:

1. Find your Weebly blog's RSS feed URL by viewing the blog page source or checking the blog settings
2. In WordPress go to Tools > Import and choose the RSS importer (install it if prompted)
3. Provide the feed URL and run the import to bring in the posts the feed exposes

Recreate categories and tags

Weebly's blog categories do not carry over automatically. After your posts are in, recreate your categories and tags under Posts > Categories and Posts > Tags, then assign them to each post so your blog stays organized and browsable.

08. Step 5: Rebuild Your Forms

Weebly's contact forms are powered by Weebly's backend, so they will not work once you leave the platform. Rebuild them with a WordPress form plugin - it only takes a few minutes per form.

• Contact Form 7 (free) - Lightweight and reliable. Great for a straightforward contact form. You build the form with simple tags and place it on any page with a shortcode
• WPForms (free tier) - A drag-and-drop form builder with ready-made templates (contact, quote request, feedback). Friendlier if you are not comfortable with shortcodes

1. Install your chosen form plugin under Plugins > Add New
2. Recreate each Weebly form's fields (name, email, message, plus any custom fields you had)
3. Set the notification email address so submissions reach your inbox
4. Place the form on your Contact page with the block or shortcode the plugin provides
5. Send yourself a test submission to confirm delivery before you go live

09. Step 6: Recreate a Store with WooCommerce

If your Weebly site sold products, you will rebuild the store in WordPress with WooCommerce, the free, standard e-commerce plugin. Because Weebly's product data lives in Square's backend, you will be re-entering products - but WooCommerce supports bulk CSV import so you do not have to add them one by one.

1. Install WooCommerce under Plugins > Add New and run its setup wizard (store address, currency, payments, shipping)
2. Gather your product data - From your Weebly export and store dashboard, collect each product's name, description, price, SKU, and images at full resolution
3. Build a product CSV - Put your products into a spreadsheet matching WooCommerce's import columns (name, description, regular price, SKU, categories, image URL/filename)
4. Import the CSV - Go to Products > Import and upload the file. WooCommerce maps the columns and creates the products in bulk
5. Add product images - Upload your product photos to the Media Library and attach them if the CSV did not link them automatically
6. Configure payments and shipping - Connect your payment gateway (Square, Stripe, PayPal, and others are supported) and set your shipping options

10. Step 7: SSL, Permalinks, and Redirects

Three quick but important housekeeping tasks make your new site secure, search-friendly, and safe to switch over.

Enable free SSL

Turn on the free SSL certificate that comes with your hosting so your site loads over HTTPS, then force HTTPS in WordPress under Settings > General (set both the WordPress Address and Site Address to https://). See how to enable your free SSL certificate for the cPanel steps.

Set pretty permalinks

Go to Settings > Permalinks and choose Post name. This gives you clean URLs like /about/ instead of query strings, which read better and match how you will map your old Weebly URLs.

Add 301 redirects from your old .html URLs

Weebly uses URLs like /about.html and /services.html. Add 301 redirects in your .htaccess file so old links and search-engine results land on the right new page:

# Redirect old Weebly .html pages to new WordPress pages
Redirect 301 /about.html /about/
Redirect 301 /services.html /services/
Redirect 301 /contact.html /contact/

# Redirect old blog post URLs if the structure changed
Redirect 301 /blog/my-first-post /blog/my-first-post/

11. Step 8: Test on a Staging Subdomain, Then Go Live

Build the entire WordPress site on a staging subdomain while your Weebly site stays live and published. Only when the new site is finished and tested do you switch your domain over - so your visitors never see a broken or half-built page.

1. Build on dev.yourdomain.com - If you installed WordPress into a staging subdomain in Step 1, do all your work there while Weebly serves the real domain
2. Test everything - Click every page and menu link, submit every form, check every image loads, place a test order if you have a store, and view the site on mobile
3. Point the live domain at WordPress - When you are satisfied, move the WordPress install to your main domain (or update WordPress and cPanel to serve it from the root) and switch your domain's DNS to your Ultra hosting account
4. Confirm SSL and redirects - Verify the live domain loads over HTTPS and that your .htaccess redirects send old .html URLs to the right pages
5. Retire Weebly - Once the new site is confirmed live and working, you can let the Weebly site go

Tune performance after launch

Once you are live, spend a little time on speed: a caching plugin, image optimization, and the server-level caching on our WordPress plans go a long way. See how to optimize WordPress performance for the specifics.

Quick Recap: Weebly to WordPress

If you only remember 5 things from this guide, remember these:

1. There is no importer - This is a guided manual rebuild because Weebly is a closed platform. Budget a weekend for a typical small business site
2. Install first, then rebuild - One-click WordPress via Softaculous, then a theme plus an optional page builder (Elementor or Beaver Builder) for Weebly-style editing
3. Recreate content page by page - Copy text, re-upload images to the Media Library, and rebuild layout, forms, and any store with WooCommerce
4. Secure and redirect - Enable free SSL, set Post name permalinks, and add 301 redirects from your old .html URLs to preserve SEO
5. Stage, then switch - Build on dev.yourdomain.com while Weebly stays live, test everything, then switch DNS last

Last updated July 2026 · Browse all Getting Started articles