Tori.lol

So yeah, I finally ditched WordPress on one of my side projects and moved it over to Joomla 5. Been meaning to do it for months, mostly out of frustration with Gutenberg and plugin bloat. I’d read a few how-to guides (like that ScalaHosting one), but honestly, most of them feel like they were written by people who haven’t touched a live site in years.

Here’s how I actually did it — not theory, just what worked (and didn’t).

Step 1: Prep — WordPress backup + Joomla fresh install
Backed up everything from the WP site — used All-in-One WP Migration just in case. Then spun up a fresh Joomla 5 install on the same server, different folder for now.

Didn’t install any fancy templates yet. Just Cassiopeia and the basics to keep things clean while migrating.

Step 2: Getting the content out of WordPress
Used the built-in WordPress export tool under Tools → Export. Picked “All content.” That gave me an XML file — kinda useless on its own, but necessary.

Also exported the media folder manually via FTP because I knew WordPress wasn’t gonna handle images well.

Step 3: Importing into Joomla — this part sucked
Tried JConverter first… nope. Didn’t work on Joomla 5 (only 3.x). So I spun up a quick Joomla 3 instance locally just to use it, installed JConverter, pointed it at a copy of my WP database, and let it pull in posts, categories, and users.

Then exported that Joomla 3 database and imported it into the Joomla 5 site after upgrading. Had to manually move the images and reassign some article categories.

Step 4: Fixing links, menus, and images
Internal links were a mess. WordPress uses different slug formats, so I had to go into each article in Joomla and update links manually (yeah, painful). Also, images didn’t always map correctly. Some were fine, some pointed to old WP URLs.

Rebuilt all the menus by hand in Joomla. Honestly not hard, just tedious.

Step 5: SEO + final polish
Had to redo all meta titles and descriptions, since Joomla and WP structure them differently. Installed an SEO plugin to help me manage that. Also tweaked article aliases and made sure redirects were in place.

Once everything looked stable, I deleted the old WP folder and made Joomla live.

Final thoughts?
Totally doable — just expect it to be more manual than advertised. If you're hoping for some magical “one-click migration,” nah. But if you’re comfortable editing database stuff and poking around in backend settings, it’s manageable.

Would I do it again? Yeah, but I’d probably start from scratch next time unless the content is really worth saving.