Migrate from WordPress or Wix

To migrate from WordPress or Wix to Éclair, prepare it like a house move: you take inventory, sort, carry things over, then forward the mail. This lesson gives you a seven-step method to keep your search rankings: URL list, sorting, transferring content and images, 301 redirects, DNS switchover and checks in Search Console.

The migration plan in one table

Step 1: take an inventory of every URL

When you migrate from WordPress or Wix, the old site's sitemap gives you the complete list. WordPress has published an index at /wp-sitemap.xml since version 5.5; with the Yoast SEO plugin, it's /sitemap_index.xml. Wix publishes /sitemap.xml, and its posts have /post/… URLs by default. This script collects every URL from a sitemap index (set SITE to your old site's address):

# Every URL of the old site, from its sitemap index
# (wp-sitemap.xml here; sitemap_index.xml with Yoast SEO, sitemap.xml on Wix)
SITE=https://ancien-site.fr
for map in $(curl -s "$SITE/wp-sitemap.xml" | grep -o '<loc>[^<]*' | sed 's/<loc>//'); do
  curl -s "$map" | grep -o '<loc>[^<]*' | sed 's/<loc>//'
done | sort -u > anciennes-adresses.txt
wc -l anciennes-adresses.txt

Import this file into a spreadsheet, then add the traffic of the last few months to each row. In Search Console, the Performance report, Pages tab, exports in one click: you'll know which URLs really matter.

Step 2: decide what moves

For each URL, choose: keep (same topic, new page), merge (two weak posts become one good one) or drop (outdated content). Then note the new URL. In Éclair, pages live at the root (/a-propos, with subpages such as /services/creation-site, four levels at most), and posts live under the blog's URL, /blog/… by default, which can't be empty.

A WordPress post published at the root can also become an Éclair page to keep exactly the same URL, at the cost of the post features: date, author, category, RSS feed, related posts. For dropped content with no equivalent, don't redirect to the home page: Google advises against sending unrelated URLs to a single page.

Step 3: transfer the content

Smart paste

Open the old page in your browser, or in the WordPress editor, copy the text, then paste it into an empty paragraph in Éclair's editor. Headings become subheadings (H1 and H2 become H2, down to H4), and paragraphs, lists, quotes, tables, code blocks and separators become blocks. Bold, italics and links come along; images don't. Pasting plain text also recognizes Markdown headings (# to ####) and lists starting with -, * or •.

With Claude and the MCP connector

If your site is connected to Claude or ChatGPT (Connect Claude to your site), which requires an HTTPS address, even a temporary one, paste the old text into a conversation and ask for a draft. The create_draft tool accepts the title, the body in Markdown, the URL, the SEO title, the meta description, “Key takeaways”, the focus keyphrase, the category, a FAQ and an image already in the media library.

Here is the text of a page from my old site (URL: /services/creation-site/).
Create a draft page in Éclair:
- keep the title, subheadings and text as they are, in Markdown;
- URL: services/creation-site;
- SEO title and meta description: reuse these: “…” and “…”;
- don't make up any information, and point out what's missing.
[paste the text here]

The draft arrives in Content, never published: you review it, complete it and publish it. The connector can't upload images; it chooses from those in the media library, and it accepts at most 60 changes per hour per app.

Step 4: images and categories

Download the originals from the old site's media library or, for WordPress, from the wp-content/uploads folder via FTP. Drag them into Media: JPG, PNG, WebP or GIF, 20 MB and 40 megapixels at most, SVGs refused. Éclair shrinks them to 2000 px, creates the WebP versions and removes the EXIF data. Fill in the alt text as you go, or use Describe with AI if the assistant is turned on (Images and the Éclair media library).

Then recreate the categories in Categories, with their description and SEO title: they become pillar pages, at the URL /blog/<category>.

Step 5: how do you migrate from WordPress without losing rankings?

Everything relies on 301 redirects and on carrying over the titles. In Redirects, add each old URL with its new destination and the type 301 — permanent (recommended). You can paste a full URL: Éclair only keeps the path, without a trailing slash. Chains are shortened automatically (A to B, then B to C, gives A to C), and the Hits column shows which old URLs are still in use.

An old URL with a trailing slash or uppercase letters takes two hops: Éclair first normalizes it (301), then applies your redirect. Google follows these two hops easily, since its crawlers accept up to ten. Two limits to know:

• URLs with parameters, such as /?p=123, can't be redirected one by one: only the path counts, and this one displays the home page;
• on Nginx, the official configuration itself returns a 404 for missing images; to redirect old images, add try_files $uri /index.php$is_args$args; to the static files block.

For each piece of content, also carry over the old site's SEO title and meta description (Yoast SEO fields or Wix SEO settings) into the editor's SEO tab. A filled-in SEO title is used as is; if it's empty, Éclair applies the format from Settings › SEO › Title format. Finally, check the scores in the Analysis tab.

Step 6: switch the domain over

1. Build the site on a temporary address and, in the meantime, uncheck Visible to search engines in Settings › SEO: everything switches to noindex.
2. If your registrar allows it, lower the time to live (TTL) of the DNS records one or two days before the switchover.
3. Point the domain to the new hosting, then turn on the HTTPS certificate.
4. If the site was built in another folder or with another host, copy the whole Éclair folder to the right place, then change the address in Settings › General: internal links follow.
5. Verify the address from the Security page, then check Visible to search engines again.
6. In Search Console, keep the property verified: if the old site carried the verification tag, paste it into Settings › SEO. Submit the /sitemap.xml sitemap. If the domain changes, also use Google's Change of Address tool.

Step 7: check after the migration

# For each old URL: final status code, number of redirects, destination
while read -r url; do
  curl -s -o /dev/null -L -w "%{http_code} %{num_redirects} %{url_effective} <- $url\n" "$url"
done < anciennes-adresses.txt

Each line must end with a 200 code, after one or two redirects, on the right page. In the following weeks, monitor Search Console's Pages report and the redirects' Hits counter. Google recommends keeping redirects for at least a year: in Éclair, they stay until you delete them. Finally, test the contact form, search and the legal pages.

Key points

• To migrate from WordPress or Wix, always start from the complete list of URLs, taken from the sitemap.
• Smart paste keeps the text's structure but not the images, which you upload again to Media.
• Claude, through the MCP connector, creates complete drafts with the URL, SEO title and meta description.
• Each useful old URL gets a 301 to its equivalent, never to the home page by default.
• After the switchover: site visible, sitemap submitted, redirects kept for at least a year.

Going further

• SEO with Éclair: automatic redirects, titles, descriptions and the sitemap.
• 40 MCP use cases, with prompts: more ready-to-copy prompts to rewrite and enrich your content.
• cPanel, Plesk, DirectAdmin: the universal method: upload the files and set up the hosting.
• Google Search Central: Site moves with URL changes.
• WordPress: XML sitemaps built in since version 5.5.

All the lessons of this path