Migrate from WordPress to Shopify

Move your WordPress content into a Shopify-led website without treating articles, media and indexed URLs as an afterthought.

I audit the complete WordPress source, decide how each content type belongs in Shopify, and build the redirect and verification plan around the new storefront. If WooCommerce is also installed, its products, customers and orders belong in a separate WooCommerce to Shopify migration scope.

Discuss your WordPress migration

When Shopify should replace WordPress

Shopify is a strong destination when commerce has become the primary purpose of the website. Instead of operating WordPress for content and another layer for products, checkout and customer data, the business can manage its core commercial content closer to Shopify.

This can provide:

Content managed alongside the products and collections it supports.
Less WordPress hosting, plugin and security maintenance.
Content that links directly into the live catalogue and buying journey.
A simpler foundation for Shopify Messaging, subscriptions and sales channels.
The option to use a standard Shopify theme or a custom headless storefront.
Clearer ownership of domains, redirects, canonicals and sitemap output.

Shopify is not automatically the best CMS for every content-heavy site. If publishing is the main job and commerce is secondary or absent, migrating WordPress to EmDash may be the better conversation.

What moves from WordPress to Shopify?

A migration can include:

Posts moved into a Shopify blog and article structure.
Pages mapped to Shopify pages or purpose-built storefront routes.
Featured images and inline media moved away from the old WordPress host.
Categories and tags mapped into useful navigation or article filters.
Authors, publication dates and reviewed summaries.
SEO titles, descriptions and social metadata where the destination supports them.
Internal links rewritten to their new canonical destinations.
Old post, page, category, tag and media URLs given a reviewed outcome.

The work should preserve the useful information, not the old theme's implementation details.

Clean content instead of copying old markup

WordPress content often contains Gutenberg classes, Elementor wrappers, inline styles, tracking attributes, shortcodes and theme-specific HTML. Copying that directly into Shopify can leave the new website coupled to a theme and plugins it no longer runs.

I separate semantic content from presentation. Headings, paragraphs, lists, tables, links and images are retained where useful. Builder wrappers, scripts, obsolete classes and unsupported embeds are removed or rebuilt for the destination.

The result is content that is easier to style, safer to render and less likely to break on mobile.

Find the content the original brief missed

A supplied spreadsheet or list of priority URLs is not always the complete website.

I reconcile WordPress sitemaps, REST API records, rendered pages and media references before deciding migration scope. This catches older articles, campaign pages, taxonomy archives and assets that may still receive traffic or hold backlinks.

In one recent project, source discovery expanded a short priority list into the complete published archive, preventing dozens of articles from being silently abandoned.

Protecting search visibility

WordPress and Shopify organise content differently. Root-level WordPress posts may become /blogs/{blog}/{article}, while categories and tags may become curated landing pages or article filters.

The SEO migration should account for:

Every known indexed source URL.
One clear destination or removal decision per source route.
Specific permanent redirects without unnecessary chains.
Updated internal links and canonical URLs.
Article metadata, Open Graph images and structured data at the destination.
A production sitemap that contains only approved canonical pages.
Continued control of the old domain where host-level redirects are required.

SEO cannot be guaranteed by a redirect spreadsheet alone. The final routes need to be tested on the deployed website.

High-resolution media that you control

The migration should archive original media before the old WordPress host is retired. Full-resolution sources are identified, downloaded and checked rather than copying generated thumbnails or leaving the new site dependent on WordPress image URLs.

Media can then be uploaded into Shopify's file system, with article HTML rewritten to use the final delivery URLs. This preserves quality and removes a fragile dependency on the legacy server.

A migration built around review

The high-level process is straightforward:

Discover the complete source inventory.
Decide what should move, change or be retired.
Normalise content and build destination mappings.
Import into a non-public or controlled state for review.
Publish, redirect and verify at launch.

That separation matters. A scraper should not write directly into a production Shopify store, and content should not become public simply because an import succeeded.

Frequently asked questions

Can a WordPress blog be moved to Shopify?

Yes. Posts, dates, authors, tags, images and body content can be moved into Shopify blogs and articles. Theme-specific markup and unsupported embeds may need to be cleaned or rebuilt rather than copied unchanged.

Can WordPress URLs be preserved?

Some routes can be retained in a custom storefront, but Shopify's standard content URLs use different shapes. Where a path changes, a specific permanent redirect should point to the closest equivalent new page.

What happens to WordPress plugins and the theme?

They do not migrate into Shopify. Their business purpose needs to be mapped to Shopify features, apps or custom storefront work. The visual design can be recreated or redesigned, but it should not depend on copied PHP or page-builder markup.

Should WordPress and Shopify run together?

Sometimes. A separate WordPress publishing site can make sense for a large editorial operation. For many commerce-led businesses, however, maintaining two platforms creates duplicated SEO, integration and operational work.

Move the content without carrying the old constraints

If Shopify is becoming the centre of the business, I can assess the current WordPress site and define a migration designed to protect content, media and search visibility while simplifying what comes next.

Start a WordPress to Shopify migration conversation