Whether due to the takeover of Tumblr by Yahoo a couple of years ago or the need for a wider selection of site features and tools, many blog creators that have started their blog on Tumblr are looking to transfer Tumblr to WordPress. It’s understandable if you think that this is going to be a long and arduous task that you may not even be able to complete successfully. Thankfully, there are a number of steps that you can follow that will make the transfer of your website from Tumblr to WordPress quick and easy to complete.
1. Making a New Account and Authenticating Your Tumblr Website
The first thing that you need to do in order to transfer Tumblr to WordPress is to make what is known as a WP engine account. Once you have formally decided on the domain name that you are going to use, making a WP engine account will allow you to get started on the transfer process and will provide you with everything you are going to need in order to make a successful transition over to WP. Creating an account takes absolutely no time, as all you have to do is choose the plan that is right for you and fill in some basic information, such as your name, e-mail address and billing info. The most common plan is a Personal Plan, which provides you with such features as 10GB of local storage and 24/7 support. All plans can be purchased on a monthly rate or an annual one.
After you have made a WP account, you will need to authenticate your Tumblr account. To do this, simply navigate to the dashboard on your WordPress account, select the Tools button and click on Import. From this area, you can select Tumblr as the import source. Once you click on this, you will need to enter the e-mail address that you used with your Tumblr account setup, as well as the account password. Once this has been completed, all that’s left to do is select Connect to Tumblr and your account should be authenticated.
2. Transferring Your Website From Tumblr to WordPress
After you’ve set up your account and authenticated your Tumblr website, it’s time to start the actual transfer process. When you select the importer bar, you will discover a list of the blogs you were running on Tumblr. Once the process has been started, you will be able to get a view of how close the transfer is to finishing, as a progress bar can be seen on the imports page. If you leave the imports page at any time during the process, you will still receive an e-mail once the process has fully finished, which you can view from your phone or on your computer at a later point in time.
During the import process, there are two different things that can happen to the videos you had on your blog. They could either be imported to the server or directly embedded into the new WordPress site. This content is then converted for you into what are known as shortcodes, which allows for shortened codes of your videos. During the conversion process, if there is anything that can’t directly be converted, you will be notified of this within the e-mail you are sent at the completion of the process. If you have set up a custom domain with your Tumblr blog, you will have to go through one extra step before the process is officially completed.
In order for the import to work correctly, you will need to disable the custom domain that you have set. The good news is that you can set it back once the transfer process finishes. To accomplish this goal, simply go to the Tumblr dashboard, select Settings and un-check the box beside Use a Custom Domain. If you would like your customers to find you at the same website domain that you were at before, it’s possible to utilize domain mapping, which is a feature that is readily accessible on WordPress if you so choose. If the process has been completed, you can start making use of additional features found with your new WordPress account.
3. Tinker With WordPress Tools
Now that you have transferred your Tumblr website to WordPress, you can start making use of the wealth of WordPress tools and features at your disposal. In fact, you can start to do this while you’re waiting for your website to be transferred. WordPress has a vast library of themes that you can choose from, which will allow you to personalize your new site and set it apart from blogs of a similar nature. WordPress even has a large number of themes that were specifically designed to be utilized with websites that have been transferred from Tumblr to WordPress.
Certain destinations like themeforest and WooThemes also have a vast amount of themes that you can use for your website. It all depends on your taste and what you think is best for your brand. When the transfer process is fully finished, you can look at the large amount of additional features and tools that will make your website more dynamic than ever before.
Hopefully, this has shown you that it’s not actually that complicated to transfer your Tumblr over to WordPress. If you’ve transferred your site to WordPress and this is your first time using WP, it will take some getting used to, as there are a lot of options that are now at your disposal. The best way to discover the features and themes that are best for your site is by simply tinkering with all of the options available to you. If you follow all of the steps above and don’t stress too much about the prospect of transferring your Tumblr website over to WordPress, the process will be completed before you know it and you can once again focus solely on running your website and gaining new customers.