SPIP to WordPress

How to migrate your SPIP web site to WordPress in 9 steps?

This tutorial describes the steps to migrate a SPIP site to WordPress.

1. Install WordPress

During the migration from SPIP to WordPress, the SPIP site must stay online and you must install a WordPress site in parallel. It can be installed in a first step in a subdirectory of the SPIP site or on a development server. You can download WordPress on https://wordpress.org/.

2. Install the FG SPIP to WordPress plugin

To migrate from SPIP to WordPress, you need the plugin FG SPIP to WordPress. The easiest way to install it is from the plugin section of your WordPress site. Add new, search SPIP, find FG SPIP to WordPress, click Install and activate the plugin.

The free version is enough for most cases. But if you want to migrate the authors, the keywords or redirect the URLs from SPIP to WordPress, you need the Premium version. Some extra add-ons are also needed if you want to migrate the SPIP documents as attachments or if you have got a multilingual site and want to migrate the translations.

3. Configure FG SPIP to WordPress

Once the plugin is activated, you must go to the plugin screen through the menu Tools > Import > SPIP.

FG SPIP to WordPress settings

Fill in the URL field with the URL of the live SPIP site. This field is used to get the images and transfer them to the WordPress media library.

Fill in the SPIP database parameters (hostname, port, database, username, password, SPIP table prefix). You can find these values in the SPIP file config/connect.php.

In the case of WordPress is not located on the same server as SPIP, you must copy the SPIP database to the WordPress server using an export/import with phpMyAdmin. In this case, you must use the WordPress credentials instead of the SPIP ones in the database parameters. The WordPress database parameters can be found in the wp-config.php file.

The other parameters should be OK by default, but you can change them if you need.

4. Test the database connection

Test database connection

Testing the database connection is an important step. It tells you if the WordPress site can connect to the SPIP database. It also tells you how much data contain the SPIP site, and which add-ons you need to do a full migration.

5. Run the import

Import content from SPIP to WordPress

Just click on the button «Import content from SPIP to WordPress» to start the transfer. This step can be long depending on the number of articles and images you have got in SPIP.

Note: If the import process hangs due to a timeout on your server or due to a memory full, you can refresh the screen and click again on the import button. It will resume automatically the import where it left off.

Once the import is complete, you should see a report like that:

[fg-spip-to-wp] 15 categories imported
[fg-spip-to-wp] 122 posts imported
[fg-spip-to-wp] 130 medias imported

6. Modify the internal links

Once the import is finished with all the data migrated, you need to modify the internal links that are included in the posts content. You can do it with the button «Modify internal links».

Modify internal links after SPIP migration

7. Test the WordPress site

The next step is to test that all data have been well transferred: articles, categories, images. You can eventually recategorize the posts and add tags.

8. Install a WordPress theme

The FG SPIP to WordPress plugin will only move the content from SPIP to WordPress. It will not move the design. For that, you need to get a WordPress theme. You can find plenty of beautiful and responsive themes on the Internet. Some are free, others are paid.
Once you have chosen a theme that matches your site, you need to configure it: add a banner, add a logo, build the front page. The procedure is different from a theme to another one.

9. Move to production

If some new articles have been written on SPIP after the migration but before you moved the WordPress site to production, you can import the latest articles by just clicking again on the import button. It will just import the new articles, and will not import the data that has already been imported.

Once the WordPress site is ready, it is time to move it to the right location in replacement of the SPIP site.
For that, you need a FTP software like Filezilla.
Create a subdirectory, name it spip
Move the SPIP files to the spip directory
Move the WordPress files to the root of your server.
Modify the .htaccess file with the new path.
You also need to change the absolute paths in the WordPress database. You can do it by exporting the WordPress database to a SQL file using phpMyAdmin, do a search/replace of the paths and import back the SQL file. Or easier, you can use the plugin WP Migrate DB to do this change directly on the database.


Go to the FG SPIP to WordPress page.

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