Question posted in 
I have a website through shopify, hosting through Shopify, and want it rebuilt in WordPress.
What would be the best way to do this while keeping the original website live until the new website is done? The new website may take a while to be created since the database of products needs a lot of modification.
I was thinking about creating a new hosting account and building it there without connecting it to the domain name, and when it is ready I’ll connect it. Does this make sense or is it even possible? Or should I build I’d offline and upload it when it’s ready? I’m not quite sure how I would build it offline though…
Thanks in advance!
3
Answers
You can build it in a new hosting environment set up for wordpress hosting. And yes, you can reassign your domain to the new site when it is ready. I don’t think building an offline wordpress site would be wise if you aren’t familiar with apache servers or transferring wordpress sites to different servers, it can be a headache.
Funny enough you’re asking this. I currently am working on a project that is more or less the same task. The best and most optimal way would to just develop the website locally on your machine, using a program like XAMPP or WAMP.
Here’s a link on how to get started using a virtual machine that is localized on your computer: https://managewp.com/blog/how-to-create-a-local-wordpress-website-in-windows-with-xampp
After installing WordPress on your machine, you can proceed by installing Woo-Commerce. This is the best e-commerce plugin which works with WordPress and is highly recommended due to how frequently updated it is. There are tons of themes out there which can help you change the look of your shop depending on what look and feel you want your shop to be.
Since you’re porting a Shopify website over to WordPress, I assume the Shopify site didn’t have anything crazy over-the-top when it comes to the look & feel…That being said, I would 100% recommend the “Storefront” theme for WooCommerce, which is a great theme, both for developers and non-developers to use. Here’s a link to the Storefront theme, which is free:
https://woocommerce.com/storefront/
In terms of hooking up the domain to the website, this can be done once you actually are ready to launch the website. There’s no need to have a live domain working for developing.
Good luck! I hope this helps!
Like the others said, you can build it offline on your computer using a program like XAMPP to create an offline server, however I prefer to build the new website online on a sub domain of your current domain, and switch it over once the website is done.
For example, if your website is amazon.com you can create a sub domain dev.amazon.com and build it there. You will most likely have to use a search and replace plugin to replace all instances of “dev.amazon.com” with “amazon.com”.
As for transferring all your products etc. you can export all your products from Shopify as a CSV file and then re-import it into WooCommerce using a plugin called WP All Import along with the WooCommerce add-on.
Good luck!