Transition From WordPress to Pure PHP Website

The migration of WordPress to a pure PHP website may be a bit expensive at times, especially when we are carrying a WordPress environment. But we can do so on a complete basis and can get complete control, speed, and dependency.

Here are some reasons as to why one should switch to a Pure PHP Website. Some of these factors include the speed of the websites; in WordPress, it is slowed down by the use of the plugins, and in Pure PHP, it is as fast as it is lightweight.

Most significantly, WordPress requires dependency on updates, unlike PHP, which does not require updates and is suitable for minimal or customized sites.

Tools Required to Transition From WordPress to a Pure PHP Website

There are some tools required to Transition From WordPress to a Pure PHP website because PHP doesn’t run directly from the IDE.

Therefore, we have to have a proper setup for getting our Website’s Transition From WordPress to a Pure PHP website.

Some of the tools are mentioned in the table below –

Auditing Our Website to Transition From WordPress to pure PHP

Firstly, suppose we have our website developed on WordPress. This is the example we are following till the end. We have to do the following things –

• List all the pages, such as Home, About, Contact, and so on.
• Identifying Dynamic Parts such as – Blog, Contact Form, Case Studies, and so on.
• Note any Plugin or Feature used, such as reCAPTCHA, Contact Forms, Sliders, and so on.

All the mentioned points have to be done as mentioned in the content below –

Pages: Home, About Us, Services, Blog, Contact

Dynamic: Blog (posts), Contact Form

Features: Google reCAPTCHA, SEO, basic admin panel

Setting Up Local Server Environment from WordPress to pure PHP

We have to follow the steps mentioned below to set up the Local Server Environment –

• Step-1: We have to go to the official website to download XAMPP https://www.apachefriends.org
• Step 2: Download from the link and install it.
• Step 3: Start Apache and MySQL from the XAMPP control.
• Step 4: Then, create a project folder inside htdocs.

Designing the Folder Structure

We have to make a clear structure of the folder and files that will be worked on accordingly when called –

Primarily, we have to make a root folder named “my-php-site” under which all the folders and files must be available as follows –

Some files such as – index.php, about.php, contact.php, blog.php, single-post.php need to be included as shown in the folder structure below.

Exporting the Content from WordPress

Now we have to export our existing data from our Website to Transition From WordPress to Pure PHP. We have to follow this path: WP Admin -> Tools -> Export -> Posts -> Download.

By doing this, we can get an XML file with the blog data, and we can manually convert it to SQL, or we can use the WP All Export Plugin for CSV Format, which is quite easier.

Creating a MySQL Database for Posts

We have to follow the steps to create a database for uploading the data of the blogs we have fetched in the previous step –

• Step 1: We have to go to localhost/phpmyadmin
• Step 2: Then we have to create a database and name it “my_Site” by clicking on the (+) icon
• Step 3: We have to run the following SQL Query, which will help us to create a table to store blog data.
• Step 4: Now, we have to insert our posts manually or by importing.

CREATE TABLE posts (
  id INT AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
  title VARCHAR(255),
  slug VARCHAR(255),
  content TEXT,
  created_at DATETIME DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP
);

Connecting the Database to Transition From WordPress to Pure PHP

We have to create a folder as elaborated in the folder structure, naming “includes”, and then we have to create a file named “db.php” inside the folder to write the logic to connect to the database.

<?php
$host = "localhost";
$user = "root";
$pass = "";
$db = "my_site";
$conn = new mysqli($host, $user, $pass, $db);
if ($conn->connect_error) {
    die("Connection failed: " . $conn->connect_error);
}
?>

Access the proper description of connecting to the database now.

Creating the Blog Listing Page

Now, we have to create a Blog Listing page to show all the existing blogs in one place. We have to create a file with the name blog.php and write the logic below –

<?php include 'includes/db.php'; ?>
<?php include 'includes/header.php'; ?>
<h2>Blog</h2>
<?php
$result = $conn->query("SELECT * FROM posts ORDER BY created_at DESC");
while ($row = $result->fetch_assoc()):
?>
  <div>
    <h3><a href="single-post.php?slug=<?= $row['slug'] ?>"><?= $row['title'] ?></a></h3>
    <p><?= substr($row['content'], 0, 100) ?>...</p>
  </div>
<?php endwhile; ?>
<?php include 'includes/footer.php'; ?>

Conclusion

In Conclusion, it can be said that moving WordPress to a pure one with PHP is a use-case requirement, and we must ensure that we do a lot of hard coding in order to get the functionality that matches the customization that came up in the case of WordPress.

Other Files may be prepared like this since the required portion has been done, and the pages like index.php, contact.php, and others have to be prepared independently and in relation to the database; all those pages will become live once again.

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