Nine out of ten website migrations damage SEO, according to a 2026 analysis by Numen Technology. The average recovery window is 523 days. One large retailer lost approximately £3.8 million in the first month after a platform switch where URL redirects were not handled correctly. These numbers apply to every CMS migration, including Joomla to WordPress. And Joomla migrations have a specific set of failure modes that most tools and marketplace freelancers are not equipped to handle.
Why Joomla Migrations Fail More Often Than They Should
Joomla’s content architecture is distributed across multiple tables that most WordPress developers have never worked with. Standard articles are in #__content, but K2 content is in separate #__k2_items tables. Custom field values are in #__fields_values. Forum history is in Kunena’s own tables. VirtueMart products are in #__virtuemart_products. A migration that reads only the standard Joomla tables produces a site where the core content appears intact while extension-driven content is simply absent. Most clients do not notice until the new site is live and someone searches for an article or product that was only in K2 or VirtueMart.
The URL problem compounds this. Joomla’s SEF URL system generates paths that depend on the menu structure, category configuration, and the aliases set on individual articles. A URL like /resources/guides/article-title on the Joomla site may come from a menu item pointing to a category filtered to a specific article. If the WordPress migration generates the slug from the article title alone, the path becomes /article-title, and every inbound link, every bookmark, and every indexed search result returns a 404. With no 301 redirects in place, that is direct ranking loss with no recovery mechanism.
What Generic Migration Tools Get Wrong for Joomla
K2 content is invisible to standard migration tools
K2 is one of the most widely used Joomla extensions for content management. It stores articles in #__k2_items, categories in #__k2_categories, and structured extra field values in #__k2_extra_fields_values. The FG Joomla to WordPress plugin, the primary dedicated migration tool for this CMS switch, does not read K2 tables in either its free or premium version. K2 migration requires a separate paid add-on. Organizations that purchase the premium FG license and run the migration without realizing K2 requires an additional add-on lose their entire K2 content archive with no error message to indicate the data was skipped.
VirtueMart requires a separate add-on that costs 69 euros
VirtueMart is the most widely used Joomla e-commerce extension. VirtueMart product data migration to WooCommerce is handled by a separate FG add-on that costs approximately 69 euros at time of writing, on top of the premium base license. A freelancer who purchases the FG premium license and runs the migration on a VirtueMart site will find that all product listings, categories, pricing, and inventory data are not present in the WordPress installation. The products exist only in the Joomla database. For an e-commerce organization, this is not a minor gap.
Joomla custom fields are not transferred
Joomla 3.7 introduced native custom fields for articles. Field definitions are stored in #__fields and the values entered per article are in #__fields_values. Generic migration tools do not read #__fields_values. Every structured data point entered into custom field groups by content editors, event dates, pricing information, specification values, related document links, arrives in WordPress missing from the corresponding post. The posts look complete in the admin but the structured data is gone.
User group permissions are not mapped automatically
Joomla’s user permission system uses a group-based model: Registered, Author, Editor, Publisher, Manager, Administrator, Super User. WordPress uses a role-based model: Subscriber, Contributor, Author, Editor, Administrator. These do not map one-to-one. The FG plugin migrates user accounts but does not configure role mapping. After a plugin migration, all imported users typically land as Subscribers regardless of their Joomla group. An organization with dozens of content authors who had Publisher or Editor access in Joomla finds that none of them can log into WordPress and publish content until roles are manually reassigned.
Kunena forum history is not covered by any plugin version
Kunena is the most widely used forum extension for Joomla. There is no version of the FG plugin, and no other dedicated Joomla-to-WordPress migration tool, that handles Kunena forum data. Sites with active community forums that used Kunena have no automated migration path for their discussion history, member records, or moderation structure. A professional migration that handles Kunena explicitly maps forum categories, topics, replies, and member attribution to wpForo 360° AI.
Five Problems With Hiring a Freelancer for a Joomla Migration
1. Most WordPress developers have no Joomla database knowledge
Joomla’s table structure, extension ecosystem, and URL routing system are specific to the platform. A WordPress developer who has not specifically migrated from Joomla before will not know that K2 content is in separate tables, will not know to check for VirtueMart or Kunena, and will not know how to read the Joomla menu structure to reconstruct the full SEF URL path for each article. They will run the available tool, check that content appears in WordPress, and deliver the project. The gaps are invisible until someone notices that an article or product is missing.
2. Competitive quoting cuts the invisible work
A proper Joomla to WordPress migration requires auditing the source database for all extension tables, mapping K2 content to a custom post type, mapping VirtueMart products to WooCommerce, preserving the full Joomla SEF URL structure with 301 redirects, mapping user groups to WordPress roles, migrating Kunena forum history, transferring SEO metadata, and verifying every content type against the source before go-live. A freelancer quoting a competitive marketplace rate cannot absorb this scope and remain competitive. The items that get cut are the invisible ones: the URL redirect map, the extension table audit, the SEO metadata transfer.
3. Your database credentials stay on their machine indefinitely
Migrating a Joomla site requires providing the MySQL credentials for the Joomla database. Those credentials provide access to every piece of content, every registered user account, every form submission, and every transaction record on the site. For most freelancers, those credentials end up in a notes app, a Slack message, or an email thread after the project ends. There is no formal deletion timeline, no encryption, and no contractual obligation to destroy the data. According to Bitsight, 45% of data breaches in 2024 involved third-party vendors or contractors who had legitimate access to systems. Legitimate access that was never revoked is one of the most common vectors for data exposure.
4. No Data Processing Agreement means GDPR exposure before the first byte moves
GDPR Article 28 requires a binding Data Processing Agreement before any third party processes personal data on your behalf. A Joomla database almost certainly contains personal data: registered user accounts with email addresses, form submission history from contact forms or registration pages, possibly sensitive data depending on the site’s purpose. Handing that database to a freelancer without a signed DPA is a GDPR violation before the migration begins. Under GDPR Article 33, if a breach occurs while the freelancer holds your data, your organization has 72 hours to report it to the supervisory authority from the moment the breach happens, not from when you find out about it. A freelancer with no contractual obligation to notify you may not report a breach for weeks.
5. No professional liability means the losses are yours
If a freelancer loses K2 content, breaks the URL structure, mishandles user data, or triggers a GDPR enforcement action, most freelancers carry no professional liability insurance and have no contractual commitment to cover the resulting losses. The cost of emergency SEO remediation after a ranking crash, the cost of a supervisory authority investigation, the cost of rebuilding lost content: all of this falls on your organization. The person who caused it has no obligation to contribute.
The Real SEO Numbers Behind These Failures
The consequences of URL structure not being preserved, metadata not being transferred, and redirects not being implemented are well documented. A major e-commerce retailer relaunched in late 2024 with over 15,000 mis-redirected URLs. Within two months, daily organic clicks dropped from 40-70 to near zero. A separate company that believed it had implemented all correct redirects still lost 50% of its organic traffic. A non-profit organization lost over 50% of its traffic in the week after a domain migration. These cases are documented by Totally Digital (June 2025) and Numen Technology (2026). The average recovery window across damaging migrations is 523 days.
What a Complete Joomla Migration Actually Covers
A complete Joomla to WordPress migration by gConverter reads the source database at every layer. Standard articles from #__content, K2 items from #__k2_items with all extra field values, native custom fields from #__fields_values, registered users from #__users with explicit group-to-role mapping, Kunena forum history to wpForo 360° AI, VirtueMart products to WooCommerce, all media to the WordPress Media Library, and every Joomla URL alias preserved as a WordPress permalink or converted to a 301 redirect. SEO metadata from article metadata fields is written to Yoast SEO. The Joomla template is rebuilt as a custom WordPress PHP theme. Nothing is silently skipped.
How gConverter Handles Your Data
DPA signed before credentials are shared. No database access happens until you have reviewed and signed a Data Processing Agreement specifying what data will be accessed, the lawful basis, retention limits, and our liability in the event of a breach.
AES-256 encrypted credential vault. Your database credentials are transmitted over TLS 1.3 and stored immediately in an AES-256 encrypted vault. Deleted within 24 hours of project completion with written confirmation.
Isolated processing environment. Your data is processed on the assigned engineer’s encrypted machine or, for GC-ExtraSecurity clients, on a dedicated EU server. Never on shared hosting, never alongside another client’s data.
30-day deletion with written confirmation. All client data is permanently deleted within 30 days of delivery using secure overwrite. You receive written confirmation.
72-hour breach notification under GDPR Article 33. We notify you within 72 hours of any breach so you can meet your own supervisory authority reporting obligation.
Read the complete GDPR and data protection documentation →
What Clients Say
Went FAR above and beyond to help us work through this project. We are thrilled with the final result and they were professional, great to work with, and responsive every step of the way. Would highly recommend.
Anna P., Wilmington NC – Customer Lobby, January 2026
Extremely professional and efficient, we had very good contact, the work was done in due time.
Timoti F., Berlin DC – Customer Lobby, February 2024
The Bottom Line
Nine out of ten migrations damage SEO. Joomla’s distributed content model means that generic tools and developers unfamiliar with the platform miss large amounts of data that has no representation in the standard tables. K2 content, VirtueMart products, native custom field values, user group permissions, and Kunena forum history are all invisible to a migration that reads only #__content and #__categories.
The organizations that migrate successfully are the ones where a migration provider read the actual Joomla database, audited every extension table, mapped every URL, and delivered a staging environment for verification before the domain switch happened. That is the difference between a migration that holds its rankings and one that needs 523 days of recovery work.
For the full content mapping reference: Why Businesses Are Moving From Joomla to WordPress →