You may have read some of my previous posts where I mentioned how much I love my Wix website, but am not a fan of their blog app. Well, after much research and frustration I finally found a way to have the best of both worlds. Here’s how to connect a WordPress blog to a Wix website.
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First, you will need to create your Wix website.
If you don’t know how to do that check out my recent post which takes you through how to do this in a step by step manner. Read this post here.
Then, if you don’t already have a WordPress blog you can read this post which takes you through the step by step process of starting a blog.
The reason I recommend starting a WordPress blog is because the Wix blog app has very limited customisability.
And doesn’t have great SEO tools which means you won’t have as much of a chance of ranking on popular search engines. Nor does it have great analytics tools so you can’t even tell where most of your traffic is coming from. Whereas, WordPress does all of these things.
But I don’t like building websites in WordPress because it’s much trickier and I find no matter what themes I use, I can never customise them as much as I would like. So that’s why a Wix website is great for the front end.
**Keep in mind, because you are using two different platforms you will need two separate domains. For example, I have my main Wix website hosted at jadescarfone.com then my WordPress blog is at jadescarfoneblog.com
Ok, so you’ve got your Wix website and WordPress blog set up. Now what?
Here’s the step by step process on how to connect a WordPress Blog to a Wix Website.
Step One: Create Your Blog Page
You can either use the existing blog page which has probably automatically been added in most Wix templates. Or you can do what I did and hide the old blog page and create a new page.
When you click on Menus & Pages you’ll see the option at the bottom that says + Add Page.
Just select that and a new page will be created. All your standard header and footer details will be there, and the rest of the page will be blank which is all you need for this process.
Step Two: Ensure your WordPress Blog is Secure
This process will only work if your WordPress site is secure. What does that mean? Having a https site instead of http.
There’s a few different steps you need to take to ensure your site is secure.
First, ensure you enable your SSL certificate with your hosting provider. This process is slightly different depending which host you’ve chosen to go with but it’s usually on the main page.
If you’re having trouble, all the domain service providers I’ve recommended in my How to Start a Blog post are really good because they have great support teams you can contact pretty much 24/7 who will be able to help you get this sorted.
Once you’ve done that, the next thing to do is to login into your WordPress dashboard and go to Settings – General. Your WordPress URL & Site Address URL will probably be defaulted to http. You simply need to change it to https and that will help to secure your site.
And the final step. If you’re still noticing it says ‘Not Secure’ in the browser window is adding a simple plugin. The plugin is called ‘Really Simple SSL’ and it really is simple.
You just add the plugin, activate it, and it does the rest for you.
Step Three: Connect WordPress to Wix
On your blog page you’ll want to click on the + symbol and scroll to the bottom option which says ‘More’.
Then you’ll be selecting the ‘Embed a Site’ option. Click on the Settings cog and simply paste your WordPress site address into the box available.
Hit apply, and your blog will magically appear.
Once you’ve added the site. You simply need to drag the box around to the size you want it to be and this will embed your WordPress blog directly into your Wix site.
And there you have it, a super simple guide on how to connect a WordPress blog to a Wix website.
Downfalls to Consider
Obviously having your website and blog running through two different platforms isn’t ideal. And here’s some downfalls to consider if you are starting from scratch and considering setting things up this way.
- It means your blog and website will be hosted in two different places meaning more logins.
- It can cause the blog to lag a little as it’s a site within a site. Not ideal for SEO. But in my opinion if your blog is optimised because you have better plugins then it’s still better than using the Wix blog which is terrible for knowing if you’re on track with SEO.
- Because your blog is embedded within the Wix site, when people click on posts etc. the link in their browser will always be the same. Probably not too much of a worry as lots of people don’t pay attention to that kind of thing. But it is something to consider. And I always notice these things since I’m an avid blogger so other business owners/bloggers may notice this as well.
Now ultimately, if blogging is your main concern I would recommend you choose a platform where you can have everything in the one place.
But if you’re like me and already have a Wix website and aren’t ready to move your entire website. Then this is a way to get around that and still have a fully functioning blog in the meantime.
In time, I will end up moving away from Wix. I just didn’t want to do it after only just purchasing a premium site, and spending a lot of time building out my site. But I’ve already made up my mind that I’ll be transitioning back to a Tonic Website as soon as I’m ready to upgrade my site.
Want to learn more about how to set up your own Tonic Website? Read this post.
Whatever you come up with, I hope you create a website you love that is totally aligned with your brand.
Please note, since writing this post I have now moved away from Wix as I couldn’t deal with the clumsiness of having a site embedded within a site. If you would like to learn more about my choice and what platform I am currently using, read this post.
Enjoy the process!
Jade xo
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