How Site Import Works in InstaWP Studio

To do this: Import your website

In InstaWP Studio (Beta), Copy my site does not paste your old HTML into WordPress. Each page is rebuilt with the same process Studio uses for the pages its AI designs, so a copied site has the same structure as a site Studio built from scratch.

What happens to your original site

Nothing. Studio only reads your site's public pages, the way a visitor's browser does, and downloads their images and fonts. It never logs in and never writes to your site, and your original site keeps running unchanged. The copy is a new, separate WordPress site.

What happens to each page

1. Studio reads each page twice

Studio reads each page once the way a visitor sees it, to learn what the site's scripts open, hide or animate. Then it reads the page again with JavaScript turned off, to get the site's own markup.

The home page decides which of the two versions is copied for the whole site.

2. The page is split into parts

Each page is cut into a header, sections and a footer, based on its real layout. Studio measures the layout while the page's styles are still applied.

The home page's header and footer become the shared header and footer for the site (WordPress template parts). A page that has a different header or footer keeps its own.

3. Content becomes WordPress blocks

Headings, paragraphs, images and buttons become core WordPress blocks. Inline text styles (for example a coloured word inside a heading) become CSS classes, so the text can still be a block and look the same.

4. Widgets are swapped for WordPress versions

On your original site	On your WordPress copy
Plain-text FAQs and tabs	Core Accordion and Tabs blocks
FAQs drawn with icons or custom headings	A plain HTML details element that keeps the original look
Tabs drawn with icons or custom headings	The original look, with a small script (about ten lines)
Forms	Studio forms
Phone menu	A menu toggle that needs no script

5. Your old site's scripts are removed

None of the original platform's code (for example Webflow, Squarespace or Wix) runs on the copy.

6. Assets move into your site

• Images go into the WordPress Media Library.
• SVG files are cleaned before they are stored: scripts, embedded HTML, event handlers and links to outside resources are removed. They are cleaned in the browser and checked again by WordPress.
• Fonts the site hosts itself are converted to WOFF2. Google Fonts are hosted on your site, not loaded from Google.
• The original stylesheet is kept, trimmed to the rules the copied pages actually use.

7. Page addresses stay the same

Every page keeps its address, including nested ones such as /services/design. If the original has no parent page for a nested address, Studio creates one.

How a copied page is stored

Each section of a page is stored as a core Custom HTML block that acts as a shell. Inside it, the headings, paragraphs, images and buttons are real core blocks, and you can click into them and type.

To see this on your home page, click Edit Page in the WordPress admin bar. The Site Editor opens on Home · Homepage. Open List View and expand the locked Home, Homepage and Sections groups. Each section of the page is listed by its name (for example pricing-section). Click any heading, paragraph or button inside a section to edit it.

The shared header and footer are template parts. Their sections show in List View as Custom HTML.

What stays HTML, and why

Some parts of a page stay as HTML:

• the layout boxes (grids, columns and wrappers)
• some pieces such as link cards, or tabs drawn with icons

Core WordPress blocks cannot reproduce every Webflow or Squarespace layout exactly. Converting everything to blocks would change the design, and the copy would no longer match your original site. So Studio makes a block wherever the design survives the conversion, and keeps HTML only where it would not.

That HTML is still editable. Change it by asking in chat, or with Click to edit.

No lock-in

Pages are built from core WordPress blocks and Custom HTML, with styles in Global Styles and the header and footer as template parts, on Studio's own lightweight theme. There is no page builder plugin. Forms and sliders come from the InstaWP Studio plugin, which is installed on the site with the theme, so the site keeps running if you stop using Studio.

Example: a Webflow template

Here is what happened when we copied a public Webflow template with four pages:

• Speed: Studio read and rebuilt the site in about 24 seconds, before importing it into WordPress.
• Layout: on the home page at desktop width, the page height was within 2 px of the original and less than 5% of the pixels differed. The two inner pages came out at exactly the original height, on desktop and on a phone.
• Images: all 59 images came over, including 51 SVG illustrations, each cleaned before it was saved.
• Fonts: both fonts came over. One came from Google Fonts. The other was a font file the site hosted itself, which Studio converted to WOFF2. Both are now hosted on the new site.
• Addresses: every page kept its address, including the nested /template-info/changelog.
• Interactive parts: the pricing tabs, the FAQ, the phone menu and the sign-up form all work on the copy, without any of the original site's scripts.
• Stylesheet: trimmed to the rules the copied pages use, from 161 KB to 125 KB.

Every site is built differently, so your results may vary. After each import, the chat reply tells you what came over and lists anything that is Different from the original.

If a whole page arrives as one block

Sometimes Studio cannot split a site's pages into sections (we have seen this on some Elementor-built pages). The page still looks the same, and you can still edit it in chat.

If this happens, please contact support with the address you imported, so we can improve the import.

Related articles

• Import your website
• Import Site: move an existing WordPress site, with its plugins and database, into the InstaWP dashboard