Migrating from WordPress to Ghost: practical guide for a smooth transition

Why switch from WordPress to Ghost?

WordPress is powerful, but often cumbersome too. Plugins pile up, updates break things, and your site gets slower and slower. Ghost is an alternative that focuses on one thing: publishing. No widgets, no pagebuilders — just writing and publishing.

That doesn't necessarily make Ghost better, but it is simpler. If you're primarily publishing blog content and don't need a webshop or complex forms, Ghost can be a breath of fresh air. Faster, clearer, less maintenance.

What migrates automatically?

Ghost offers an official WordPress plugin that exports your posts, pages, tags and authors to a JSON file. You import that file into Ghost, and your basic content is there. Images within posts usually come along, but are often hosted locally — Ghost doesn't automatically download them.

What doesn't transfer:

• Your theme and design
• Plugins and custom functionality
• Comments (unless you use Disqus or an external service)
• Menus and widgets
• Custom post types or taxonomies

So you start with your text and structure, but need to rethink how your site looks and works.

Building or customising a Ghost theme

Ghost works with Handlebars templates. That's simpler than PHP, but does require knowledge of HTML and CSS. There are free and paid themes available, but if you want something specific — like a particular layout or integration — you'll quickly need custom work.

I built a fully custom Ghost theme myself for a client moving away from WordPress. We kept the content and URL structure intact, but redesigned everything: navigation, overview pages, single posts. The result was considerably faster and clearer than the old WordPress site, but it did take a few weeks of development time.

If you're not a developer yourself, budget for theme customisation. Ghost has fewer ready-made solutions than WordPress — that's both its strength and limitation.

Setting up redirects and SEO properly

If your URL structure doesn't remain exactly the same, you need to set up redirects. Ghost supports a redirects.json file where you can redirect old URLs to new ones. This prevents visitors and search engines from hitting dead links.

Also make sure to review your meta descriptions, titles and alt texts. These sometimes don't transfer cleanly from WordPress. Ghost doesn't have an SEO plugin like Yoast — you fill everything in manually through the post settings.

What if you're unsure whether Ghost is the right choice?

Ghost works well for blogs, newsletters and straightforward content sites. Once you need webshops, membership management or complex integrations, it becomes more complicated. WordPress often remains the better choice then, or you look at a platform like Shopify (for e-commerce) or a fully custom solution.

I always advise clients on the platform that suits their situation — not the platform I profit most from. Sometimes that's Ghost, sometimes WordPress, sometimes something else. For one client I migrated from WordPress to Ghost because speed and simplicity were priorities. For another I actually recommended a static site, without a CMS, because that was a better fit.

If you're unsure whether migrating to Ghost makes sense for your site, or if you need help with the technical side, feel free to get in touch via the studio. I'll look at what's truly needed — no standard pitch, just honest advice.