Our Checklist for Migrating a Drupal 7 Website to WordPress
Migrating a website, especially from Drupal 7, is a strategic step essential for ensuring the security, performance, and longevity of your project. With the official end of support for this version by the Drupal community, it has become crucial to carefully plan and organize your migration. We’ve covered this topic in detail in a dedicated article (Why and how to migrate from Drupal 7 to Wordpress ?).
Although this checklist is specifically focused on migrations to WordPress, it can also be applied to transitions to other platforms. We have chosen WordPress as the reference for this article due to its simplicity, flexibility, and popularity, as well as our proven expertise, with over 500 WordPress projects successfully completed.
Why read this article? It provides a clear, step-by-step methodology to help you approach your migration successfully, regardless of the CMS you choose. And if you need personalized support, don’t hesitate to contact our experts, who are here to guide you.
With that said, here’s a detailed checklist to guide you through the migration process and maximize your chances of success.
1. Clearly Define the Goals of Your Business and Website
Before starting a migration, identify the reasons and objectives behind your project. Are you looking to increase brand awareness, generate leads, enhance security, or optimize site performance? These answers are critical to creating a tailored roadmap and prioritizing key aspects of your new website. The clearer your goals, the more structured and coherent your migration will be.
2. Identify the Pain Points of Your Current Website
Analyze your current site in detail to understand its limitations. Is the content problematic? Is the design outdated? Are there security or performance issues? Formalizing these pain points will help you set clear objectives for the migration and build a site that better meets the needs of your users.
3. Plan and Develop a Migration Strategy
Define the resources needed for the migration, including hosting, support, and development, as well as the expectations of your users. If your site requires a redesign or significant updates, consider this migration an opportunity to start fresh with a solid foundation. A simple update may not be sufficient to meet your current and future needs.
4. Choose a Suitable Hosting Platform
While Drupal and WordPress both run on PHP, it’s essential to verify that your hosting provider supports the necessary versions of PHP and MySQL for your migration. If you’re unsure, our infrastructure team is available to guide you in making the right choices and ensuring optimal compatibility.
5. Back Up Your Drupal Website
Before beginning the migration, create comprehensive and recurring backups of your current site. This includes files, databases, images, and text content. These backups ensure you can recover your data in case of any issues during the transition.
6. Understand the Differences in Nomenclature Between WordPress and Drupal
Migration involves understanding the structural differences between Drupal and WordPress. For example, “nodes” become “posts” or “pages,” “vocabularies” translate to “categories,” and “blocks” become “widgets.” Clear documentation of these correspondences will facilitate an organized migration process.
7. Conduct a Content Audit
A content audit is critical for identifying what needs to be transferred, updated, or removed. Use tools like Google Analytics or Matomo to analyze the most visited content and Google Search Console to identify critical pages for SEO. This will help you efficiently organize your content on the new platform.
8. Select Microsites and Multisites to Migrate
If you manage multiple subdomains or microsites linked to your main project, document them and include them in your migration strategy. Each site must be analyzed to ensure no important elements are overlooked.
9. Verify the Availability of Plugins and External Integrations
Ensure that third-party services used on your current site, such as CRMs, ERPs, PIMs, DAMs, or analytics platforms, are compatible with WordPress. If not, identify alternatives available within the WordPress ecosystem to guarantee uninterrupted service for your business tools.
10. Safeguard Your SEO Rankings
For a successful migration, it’s essential to maintain your SEO positioning. Retrieve all critical metadata, such as “meta titles” and “meta descriptions,” to integrate them into your new site. Also, prepare a 301 redirection plan to ensure old URLs correctly point to new ones, maintaining traffic continuity. WordPress offers tools like Yoast SEO to simplify this critical step.
Plan Your Migration Methodically
Migrating a Drupal 7 site to WordPress, or any other platform, is a strategic step requiring meticulous planning. By following this checklist, you can anticipate technical challenges, ensure a smooth transition, and maximize the benefits of your new site.
Ready to get started? Contact us to receive tailored support and ensure a stress-free migration. WordPress could be the ideal platform to meet your current and future needs.
