Migrate Your WordPress Blog to Shopify, Every Permalink Redirected

Export the blog in WordPress under Tools > Export, which downloads a WXR (.xml) file of posts, pages, comments, categories, tags and authors. Shopify has no button that reads that file, so posts go in through a migration app or Shopify’s Blog API. Turn categories into tags, re-upload images from /wp-content/uploads, set each article’s SEO title, then 301 every old permalink to its new Shopify URL.

The content can move; the WordPress machinery cannot. Posts and pages travel in the WXR export, and Shopify’s notes say single pages such as shipping or refund policies can usually be pasted in by hand. Your theme, plugins, forms and page builder layouts do not run on Shopify, so they are rebuilt as Shopify theme sections and apps. Every URL then gets a 301.

Only for the blog half. If you sell through WooCommerce, the products, variations, customers and orders are a store migration with their own export files and limits, covered on our WooCommerce to Shopify page. This page is for WordPress sites that are mostly content: a blog, a brochure site, or a blog sitting next to a store that already runs on Shopify.

Yes, and for a large blog it is often the better call. One route is Shopify’s Buy Button, which adds products to an external website or blog post and is included in all Shopify subscription plans. The other keeps WordPress for content and Shopify for the store, linked by menus and shared design. The cost is two systems to update. See our WordPress and Shopify integration service for that setup.

Yes. Shopify has a built-in blog: you write posts, add excerpts for the blog landing page, organize posts with tags and edit each post’s search engine listing. You can also create more than one blog, for example a journal and a recipes section. It is simpler than WordPress, with no category tree and no plugin library, which suits stores whose blog supports the products.

Mostly flexibility. Shopify posts use tags instead of a category tree. A post author must be the store owner or a staff account with admin access, which matters for guest writers. Article URLs always sit under /blogs/{blog-name}/, so no WordPress permalink survives unchanged. And plugins such as SEO, related-post or table-of-contents tools need a Shopify app or theme code instead.

In the WordPress dashboard, open Tools > Export. Choose All content, or choose Posts to filter by category, author, date range or status such as Published. Click Download Export File and WordPress saves a WXR file, short for WordPress eXtended RSS, to your computer. That one file is the starting point for the Shopify import.

WordPress lists nine kinds of content: posts, pages, custom post types, comments, custom fields, categories, tags, custom taxonomies and users. Image files are not in that list. The file points to your media by URL, so we download each image from /wp-content/uploads and upload it to Shopify before any article is posted. Otherwise posts keep loading images from the old WordPress host.

Not from the Shopify admin. Shopify’s migration notes list migration apps and the Blog API as the ways to bring blog posts across. We parse the WXR file with our own script, clean each post’s HTML and send it to the Blog API, which lets us keep the original publish date, excerpt and slug for every article.

Yes. The WordPress Posts export can be filtered by category, author, date range and status. Before exporting we pull 12 months of Search Console data so you can see which posts earn clicks. Thin or out-of-date posts can stay behind, and their URLs redirect to the closest post that does move, so no old link ends on a 404.

They merge into Shopify tags. Shopify’s help says you can use tags to organize posts into categories or by subject, so each WordPress category becomes a tag and nested categories flatten. If your blog has a few large, distinct sections, those can become separate Shopify blogs instead, each with its own URL. We agree the mapping with you before import.

Shopify only lets you pick the store owner or a staff member with admin access as a post’s author. For a blog with guest writers, that means either giving some writers staff accounts or keeping one author and adding a byline line inside each post. Author archive pages in WordPress, such as /author/jane/, are redirected to the blog or to that writer’s best post.

Yes, with mapping. SEO plugins store titles and meta descriptions as custom fields on each post, and custom fields are part of the WXR export. We read those fields and write them into each Shopify article’s search engine listing. Where a post had no custom title, we keep the post title rather than inventing one.

Not as they are. Shortcodes such as [gallery] only render while their plugin runs, so in the export they are plain text. We convert them to clean HTML before import. Gutenberg blocks mostly come across as HTML. Pages built in Elementor or Divi depend on those plugins to render, so they are rebuilt as Shopify theme sections.

Comments are in the WXR file, so nothing is lost at export. Whether they appear on Shopify is your choice. Many owners leave old comments behind and start fresh; others keep the useful ones as a short quoted section at the end of a post. We agree which option you want before import, since it changes how each post is built.

WordPress offers Plain (/?p=123, the default), Day and name (/2024/05/28/post-name/), Month and name, Numeric, Post name and Custom structures, plus /category/ and /tag/ archives. Shopify articles live at /blogs/{blog-name}/{handle}. The post slug can usually stay the same; the path around it changes, so every post, archive and page gets its own 301.

Not reliably with its own tool. Shopify warns that URLs containing query strings might not work as expected with its redirects, and its redirects only fire from broken URLs, while /?p=123 sits on your homepage, a live page. We test a sample after launch. If they fail, the fix is a rule at your DNS or CDN provider that sends each ?p= link to its new article.

Expect some movement after any platform change; nobody can promise none. What protects rankings is a one-to-one 301 map where each old permalink points straight to its new article in one hop, with titles, meta descriptions, headings and images moved intact. We map from your sitemap and Search Console, then retest the redirects after launch.

Shopify allows 100,000 URL redirects on standard plans and 20,000,000 on Shopify Plus. A blog with a few thousand posts, plus its category, tag, author and date archives, fits comfortably. We keep the list one row per old URL, so you can audit it in a spreadsheet before launch.

Not automatically. WordPress users in the WXR file are mainly authors and site accounts. If your site has members or subscribers who should become Shopify customers, we export them separately and import them by customer CSV. Shopify says customer passwords cannot be migrated that way, so each person gets an invite to set a new password.

No. Most domains stay where they are registered, and we change the DNS records so the domain points to Shopify. Before switching we list your email (MX) records, because many WordPress hosts also run the mailbox, and we confirm mail still arrives after the change. Cancel the old hosting only after launch checks pass.

WordPress stays live until launch. We import a first full export into Shopify, review it with you, then freeze publishing for a short window and import anything posted since. DNS switches, we test redirects and pages, and the old host stays paid for until those checks pass, so going back is a DNS change.

It depends on post count, how many pages use a page builder, how categories and authors map, and whether you have old ?p= links to handle outside Shopify. A WooCommerce store adds product and order work. FactoryJet quotes a fixed price in writing after a short scoping call, with defects fixed inside the build price for a cover period agreed up front.

FactoryJet migrations run 5 to 8 weeks from signed scope to launch, and a custom-theme store without migration takes 3 to 5 weeks. A blog-only move into a store you already run on Shopify is scoped on its own and quoted in writing. Across 500+ businesses since 2014, 97% of our projects have shipped on time.