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wpgraft
WPBakeryWPBakeryAny WPBakery (Visual Composer) page
BreakdanceBreakdanceNative elements, straight into the store

How to move a page from WPBakery to Breakdance

Move a page from WPBakery to Breakdance as real, editable Breakdance elements, not a screenshot. What comes across, and what does not.

wpgraft never reads WPBakery’s data. There is no exporter, no importer and no shortcode translator anywhere in this, by design, because those are the parts that break. wpgraft reads the page as your browser rendered it: the real elements and the real computed styles on each one, at every breakpoint you ask for. It then rebuilds that as Breakdance’s own native elements, with the styles written into Breakdance’s own fields. Nothing that arrives depends on WPBakery still existing.

Both ends of this move are WordPress, which makes it the easy version of the job: the source page and the Breakdance editor can be two tabs of the same site, or two different sites on two different hosts, and it makes no difference, because nothing is exported and nothing has to match. You can leave the WPBakery page exactly where it is while you rebuild it, and compare the two side by side until you are happy.

Before you start

What to have ready

Phase 1 · Set up
  1. 01

    Install the wpgraft extension in Chrome

    wpgraft is a Chrome extension. Get it from wpgraft.com/releases. Install it, click the icon, sign in: the free tier needs an account but is never billed. On your very first copy it asks you to confirm you have the right to reuse what you are copying, once, and does not ask again.

    Get the Chrome extensionwpgraft.com/releases → Get the Extension
  2. 02

    Install the wpgraft plugin on the Breakdance site

    The plugin is the WordPress half of wpgraft: it receives the copy, shows it in a panel inside the Breakdance editor, inserts it, and pulls the images into your Media Library. Download the zip from wpgraft.com/releases, then upload it in wp-admin. It is free software with no licence key and nothing to configure. Its only admin screen, Settings → wpgraft, is a status page that tells you which builder it detected. It updates itself from inside wp-admin like any other plugin: a version check against wpgraft.com that carries no token and no licence key, only your WordPress and PHP versions and your site's own address in the request's User-Agent, as the privacy policy sets out. It touches nothing on your site until you send it something.

    Download the plugin (.zip)Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin → Activate
Phase 2 · Copy, in WPBakery
  1. 03

    Open the WPBakery page you want

    The published page. WPBakery’s back-end editor shows shortcode boxes rather than the design.

    Open the page on the front end
  2. 04

    Choose Breakdance in the extension

    Click the wpgraft icon on the source tab and pick your destination under Copy into. There is one Breakdance entry, labelled Breakdance. Switch Also copy tablet & phone on unless you only want the desktop layout: it is off until you turn it on, and it captures three viewports instead of one, so the copy arrives responsive.

  3. 05

    Point at what you want and copy it

    Select element starts a picker: hover to highlight, press ↑ to widen the selection to the parent and ↓ to narrow it again, click to confirm, Esc to cancel. Whole page takes the entire document in one pass and is a Pro capture. wpgraft scrolls the page for you first so lazy images and scroll-triggered effects have fired, then waits for the fonts and images to finish before it reads anything.

    click copies · ↑ widen · ↓ narrow · Esc cancels
Phase 3 · Insert, in Breakdance
  1. 06

    Open the page in Breakdance

    From the page list or the admin bar. The builder opens at ?breakdance=builder&id=<post id>. The wpgraft panel appears in the bottom-right corner of the editor as soon as it recognises the builder.

    Edit with Breakdance
  2. 07

    Send the copy to the site

    The extension does not push copies at sites by itself, because that would mean any approved site could receive a capture made for another one. Click the wpgraft icon again with the editor open: it names the site and the copy and asks you to confirm, or press Send to open builder. The first time for a given site it also asks whether that site may receive copies at all; approve it once and it stays approved (you can take a site off the list later from the same popup).

    Send to open builder
  3. 08

    Insert it

    The panel lists what is waiting for this builder. Decide whether to tick Import images to Media Library. On, and the images become yours; off, and they keep pointing at the original page. Then press Insert into builder. wpgraft writes the elements into the builder’s live store and verifies the tree actually grew before reporting success. The element-definition pipeline can quietly do nothing until it is ready, so the insert is retried rather than assumed.

    Insert into builder
  4. 09

    Save it

    Press Breakdance’s own Save. The copy is in the open builder session until you do.

Phase 4 · Edit
  1. 10

    Edit it like you built it

    This is where the product earns its keep. Click anything in the copy and Breakdance’s own panel opens with real values in it. There is no wrapper you may not touch, no “generated, do not edit” block and no code view. Change the heading, swap the image, drag the padding.

The result

What lands in Breakdance

Real Breakdance elements

Sections, divs, headings, text, images and buttons, each selectable in the structure panel with its own settings.

Styles in the design panels

Written where Breakdance’s own design tabs read them, so the panels show values instead of an empty form over a styled element.

Images in your Media Library

Tick Import images to Media Library and every image is pulled into WordPress before the elements land.

After the insert: Press Breakdance’s own Save. The copy is in the open builder session until you do.

The source side

Copying out of WPBakery

The published page. WPBakery’s back-end editor shows shortcode boxes rather than the design.

  • This is the migration people put off for years, and it is the one wpgraft makes easiest, precisely because wpgraft never reads a vc_row shortcode. It reads the page WPBakery rendered.
  • WPBakery output is wrapper-heavy: vc_row, vc_column, wpb_wrapper and an inner column stack around almost everything. wpgraft removes wrappers whose removal provably changes nothing, so the destination does not inherit the stack.
  • Old WPBakery pages often carry inline styles and a page-specific stylesheet from the theme. Those resolve into computed values, so the copy does not depend on the theme coming with it.
  • This is the way off WPBakery without a shortcode graveyard. Deactivating WPBakery normally leaves [vc_row] text all over the page; a copy built in the destination’s own elements has no shortcodes in it at all.
Honest limits

What does not carry over

A guide that only lists what works will waste your afternoon. These are the things that surprise people, set out before you start rather than discovered afterwards.

  • What is on screen is what is copied. A closed accordion is copied closed; an inactive tab is copied inactive; a carousel is copied on whichever slide was showing. Put the page into the state you want before you pick.
  • Behaviour does not travel; appearance does. A slider arrives as its markup and its styling, not as a working slider; a form arrives as a form that has had its submit target deliberately removed, so your copy can never post to WPBakery’s endpoint. Wire interactive things up with Breakdance’s own tools.
  • Anything driven by a query arrives as a design. A post grid copies as the posts that were on the page at that moment, not as a loop that keeps querying.
  • Raw HTML in a copy needs the unfiltered_html capability, which normally means an administrator. Without it, the parts of the copy that would output markup verbatim are removed before the insert, or, where WordPress sanitizes them on save instead, left to it, and the panel tells you how many. Everything else in the copy still lands. Insert as an administrator if you want all of it.
  • Links that pointed at code are disabled. A javascript: link in the source page is neutralised on the way in, for every account including an administrator’s, and you are told how many. It is the one thing wpgraft will not carry across for you.
  • Only the page in the tab is copied; never what is inside a frame. An <iframe> is kept as the embed it is: a YouTube or Vimeo frame becomes a video element, a Google Maps frame becomes a map. wpgraft does not descend into it, same origin or not, which is also why a builder’s own editor canvas and an AI chat’s artifact preview have to be opened on their own URL before you can copy them.
  • The insert lives in the open builder session until you press Save.
Questions

WPBakery to Breakdance: FAQ

Will I be left with [vc_row] shortcodes anywhere?

Not in the copy. wpgraft never reads the shortcodes. It reads the rendered page, and what it writes is the destination builder’s own elements. Your original WPBakery pages are untouched and still need WPBakery; the copies do not.

Breakdance and Oxygen 6 are the same engine. Can I use one guide for both?

The steps are the same shape, but pick the right entry in the extension: Breakdance and Oxygen 6 ship different element sets, and Oxygen 6 needs a few styles moved onto different paths before its element panel will show them. wpgraft does that per destination, so choosing the wrong one gives you a copy the panel cannot fully edit.

Does moving from WPBakery to Breakdance change anything on the WPBakery side?

No. Nothing is exported, moved or deleted. wpgraft reads the rendered WPBakery page the same way any browser does and writes a new copy into Breakdance. Your WPBakery site keeps running exactly as it did, which is what lets you rebuild one section at a time and switch over when you are ready.

Will the Breakdance copy still need WPBakery installed?

No. What lands in Breakdance is Breakdance’s own elements with the styles in Breakdance’s own fields. There is no shortcode, no embed, no wrapper block and no stylesheet borrowed from WPBakery. The copy is fully yours and stands on its own.

Is the result editable, or is it a locked block?

Editable. Click anything in it and Breakdance’s own settings panel opens with real values in it. That is the whole product, and it is measured on every release: an inserted copy has to be selectable through Breakdance’s own API and the editor has to reopen cleanly on the saved page, or the build does not ship.

Does it copy the mobile and tablet layouts too?

Yes, once you switch Also copy tablet & phone on. It is off by default, and with it off you get the desktop layout only, slightly faster. With it on, wpgraft measures the page three times: at your window’s own width, then at 768px, then at 375px. The per-breakpoint values are written into Breakdance’s own responsive controls. One honest caveat about the measurement: the Web Store build produces the narrow viewports inside the page rather than by resizing the window. It re-evaluates every media query at the target width, pins the layout width, resolves vw units and clamps position: fixed boxes to it, and the result is measured at 100% of the property values a real 768px and 375px window produces on getbootstrap.com and on a stock WordPress theme. What it cannot do is re-run the source site’s own JavaScript for the new width, so a layout a script computes on resize is copied as the desktop script left it, and the capture says so in a warning.

What does this cost?

The free tier is three copies in total, usable on any destination, at full fidelity, with nothing watermarked or downgraded, within seven days of signing up. Whole-page copies are a Pro capture; sections and elements are not. Pro removes the copy limit and opens up whole-page captures.

Do I need the wpgraft plugin on the Breakdance site?

Yes. It is the WordPress half of wpgraft, and it is free software with no licence key, no counter and no upgrade nag in it. It receives the copy, shows it in a panel inside the Breakdance editor and imports the images. It does nothing on its own until you send it something.

Is copying a page from WPBakery legal?

That depends on whose page it is and what you copy. Your own site, your own client’s site, a template you have licensed, or your own design on a platform you are leaving. None of that is in question. Somebody else’s design is a decision you are making, and wpgraft asks you to confirm you have the right to make it before your first copy. Text, images, fonts and icons all carry their own licences, and they travel with the copy.

Read more

Try a single section first.

Three copies free, every destination unlocked, full fidelity. Point at one WPBakery section, put it in Breakdance, then judge the result before you decide anything.