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Migrating a WordPress site to PageMotor

The honest end-to-end walkthrough: what carries over cleanly, what needs rebuilding, and the surprises to plan for before you start.

What you'll need before you start: WordPress admin access to install the exporter; a PageMotor installation running version 0.8.3b or later; PHP 7.0+ on the computer you'll run the translator from (run php -v in Terminal to check); an SFTP client such as Cyberduck (free) or Transmit (Mac); and the three downloads below. Get all three before you begin.

Three things to know before you start

These surprises catch nearly everyone on their first migration. Reading them now saves you an hour of confusion later.

What migrates automatically

The translator handles all of this without any manual work from you. Once the import is done, these things will be on your PageMotor site exactly as they were on WordPress.

What does not migrate automatically

Stage 1 — Export from WordPress

Install the exporter plugin, pull everything out of WordPress in one file, then uninstall it. The exporter is read-only — it does not change your WordPress site in any way.

1 Install the EP WP Exporter

Log in to your WordPress admin. Go to Plugins › Add New › Upload Plugin, upload ep-wp-exporter-1.4.0.zip, and activate it. That is all you need to do here.

2 Run the export

Go to Tools › EP WP Export. Tick all the boxes: Posts, Pages, Custom Post Types, Navigation Menus, Widgets, Media Manifest, Theme Settings. Click Export for PageMotor and save the JSON file that downloads. The filename will include your site name and today's date — keep it somewhere you can find it.

This one file contains everything: your content, menus, widgets, compiled CSS, and all your Focus skin settings.

3 Clean up WordPress

Deactivate and delete the EP WP Exporter plugin. You are done with it.

Stage 2 — Translate

The translator converts your WordPress export JSON into three files PageMotor can work with. It runs from the command line and takes under a minute for most sites.

4 Check your PHP version

The translator is a PHP command-line script. Open Terminal and run:

php -v

You need PHP 7.0 or later. If you see "command not found", you will need to install PHP or add it to your PATH before continuing.

5 Run the translator

Unzip pagemotor-migrator-v2.2.zip to a convenient location (your Downloads folder is fine). Open Terminal and run:

# Navigate into the unzipped folder
cd ~/Downloads/pagemotor-migrator

# Run the translator against your export file
php translate.php /path/to/your-export.json --verbose

The translator auto-detects Focus sites and selects the Focus Bridge theme. You will see a line for each page, post, and menu item it processes.

When it finishes, three files appear in the same directory:

Want to preview what the translator will do without writing any files? Add --dry-run to the command.

6 Review the page map

Open the *-pagemap.md file before you import anything. Check that every page and post is accounted for, the new URLs look right, and there are no unexpected notes on any entries. This is also the document you will use as a testing checklist in Step 16.

One thing to expect: WordPress can serve any page at its slug directly (/about/), but PageMotor uses the full hierarchical path (/company/about/). The translator rewrites these in content and menus, but any hardcoded links in unusual HTML may have been missed. The page map is the easiest place to spot-check this.

Stage 3 — Import into PageMotor

This is the longest stage. Steps 9 and 13 write to the database, which is why a backup comes first. Steps 8 and 9 are order-dependent: Focus Bridge must be active before you import. Step 12 (images) takes the most clock time, though most of it is just waiting for files to copy.

7 Back up your database

Use phpMyAdmin, Adminer, or your hosting control panel to export a full SQL dump of your PageMotor database. Save it somewhere safe. If you are importing into a fresh PageMotor installation with nothing in it yet, this is less critical — but it is still good practice and takes two minutes.

8 Install the Focus Bridge Theme

1. In PageMotor admin, go to Manage Themes
2. Upload focus-bridge.zip
3. Activate it

Focus Bridge is a minimal bridge theme — it adds the CSS class hooks (.focus and .mode-focus) that your existing Focus skin expects, so all your styles work without any modifications.

9 Import the theme data

1. Go to Admin › Theme Settings › Theme Data
2. Click Import
3. Upload the *-import.txt file from Step 5

This imports your blocks, templates, menus, footer content, compiled CSS, and all your Focus design option values in one operation.

10 Install the Content Types plugin (if generated)

If the translator generated a *-content-types/ folder alongside the other output files, your WordPress site used custom post types (Focus Cards, Modular Content blocks, or similar) that need to be registered in PageMotor.

1. Using SFTP (you will be setting this up in Step 12 anyway), upload the entire *-content-types/ folder to user-content/plugins/ on your PageMotor server
2. In PageMotor admin, go to Manage Plugins and activate the "Content Types" plugin

If the translator did not generate this folder, skip this step. Most Focus Card sites will have one; simpler sites without custom post types will not.

11 Recompile CSS

1. Go to Admin › Theme Settings › Design Options
2. Click Save

The save action always triggers a full CSS recompile from your imported design options. You do not need to change any values — just open the page and click Save. When you reload the front end, your styles should be there.

12 Transfer images via SFTP

The translator rewrites every image path in your content to point at the correct location on PageMotor — but it does not move the actual files. You will need to copy them from your WordPress server to your PageMotor server yourself.

What you will need

• SFTP credentials for your PageMotor server — hostname, username, and password. Find these in your hosting control panel (cPanel, Plesk) or your provider's welcome email. If you cannot find them, contact your hosting provider's support. Not FTP — SFTP, port 22.
• An SFTP client — Cyberduck (free, Mac and Windows), FileZilla (free, all platforms), or Transmit (Mac).
• Your WordPress images — either from your live WordPress server via a second SFTP connection, or from a local backup.

Where things live

On your WordPress server, your images are in wp-content/uploads/, organised in year/month subfolders like 2024/01/, 2024/02/.

On your PageMotor server, images go into user-content/uploads/wp-media/. You may need to create the wp-media subfolder if it does not exist yet.

How to transfer

1. Connect to your PageMotor server in your SFTP client using the hostname, username, and password from your hosting control panel. Set the protocol to SFTP and port to 22.
2. Navigate to user-content/uploads/ on the server. Create a wp-media folder here if one does not already exist.
3. Upload all your WordPress image files into user-content/uploads/wp-media/, preserving the same folder structure they had in wp-content/uploads/.

13 Run the content migration

1. Using the SFTP connection from Step 12, upload the *-content.php file to the PageMotor root directory — the top-level folder where you can see index.php and config.php.
2. Visit the file in your browser: https://your-site.com/your-site-content.php
3. The script runs through every page and post, printing Created, Updated, or Skipped for each one. When it finishes, it shows a summary with totals.

Stage 4 — Configure and test

Your content is in. This stage connects the working parts and checks that everything landed correctly.

14 Set up contact forms

If your WordPress site had forms, the translator has already converted the shortcodes to EP Email's [contact-form] format and placed them in the right pages. To make them actually send email:

1. Install and activate EP Email on your PageMotor site
2. Configure SMTP in EP Suite › Email › SMTP Connection — the Mailgun guide covers this in detail if you need it
3. The translator maps WordPress form IDs to EP Email form names — check your page map for the exact names used
4. For forms with compound name/address fields, star ratings, or conditional logic, also install EP Email Advanced Forms

If your site had no forms, skip this step.

15 Add breadcrumbs (optional)

If your Focus site used the Thesis breadcrumbs add-on, the translator has already placed an EP Breadcrumbs instance above the page title in the content block. You just need the plugin itself.

1. Upload via Manage Plugins and activate
2. Breadcrumbs appear automatically on all pages that use the imported templates
3. Optionally configure the default home label and separator in EP Suite › Breadcrumbs

EP Breadcrumbs uses the same CSS class names as Focus breadcrumbs (.crumbs, .crumbs-crumb, .crumbs-sep), so your existing breadcrumb styles carry over unchanged.

If your site did not use breadcrumbs, skip this step.

16 Review and test

Open the page map (*-pagemap.md) and use it as your testing checklist. Walk through the site and verify:

• All pages load and display correctly, with the right layout and styles
• Navigation menus work and link to the right URLs
• Internal links resolve correctly (check a few from deep pages back to shallow ones)
• Featured images display at the top of content
• Footer matches your WordPress site
• Contact forms submit and you receive the emails
• Blog index shows posts with thumbnails and pagination works
• Individual blog posts display correctly with dates
• Custom CSS overrides are working

Beyond this guide

This guide is built around one specific path: Thesis/Focus WordPress → existing PageMotor installation, preserving the Focus design. If your situation is different, here are the right tools for each case.

Troubleshooting

Open these only if you hit them.

INSERT INTO pm_user_options (user_id, name, value)
VALUES (<user-id>, 'type', 'administrator');

INSERT INTO pm_user_options (user_id, name, value)
VALUES (<user-id>, 'PM_Users', '{"type":"administrator"}');