Converting Joomla to Wordpress?

[mudskippa26962]

Ok I am getting pretty sick of Joomla and am thinking of changing to Wordpress before it's too late. This is my site http://www.smyls.co.uk It's not bad considering I built it myself from scratch with no tecchy know-how but I think WP is probably much more clean and useable. So...

1, Is there an easy, free way to convert it over to WP?
2, Will i lose all my backlinks that are not to the homepage?
3, How do you technically do this so there is no sign of working on the site. Ie. How do I set up a WP thing and have my Joomla site live while I'm still working on the new one and then just replace it when it's finished? Can that be done?

Any help very much appreciated! Thanks

 

[descalzo]

1. Google brought up: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/joomla-to-wordpress-migrator/
No idea if it works, but Google or the WordPress site would be the best sources for information.

2. Not sure if any migration tool would handle this.
a. List all the backlinks you really want
b. Figure out the WordPress equivalents once you have completed the migration
c. Use .htaccess to perform 301 permanent redirects ( instead of internal rewrites. 301's will make Google list the new URL instead of the old)

3. See #1. The main thing is to keep your index.php from Joomla and not install the index.php from WordPress ( make a copy of the Joomla index.php before installing WordPress )

 

[mudskippa26962]

Thanks that really helps. I did do a migrate in the end using FGJoomlatoWordpress and it worked pretty well considering. But now i'm not sure about WP! Another post to follow. Thanks for your help though -it really helped to understand the whole reason behind the index.php ans ht.access that the instructions mentioned.