Drupal to WordPress migration: Sorting the basics first
Start your Drupal to WordPress migration by setting clear objectives and aligning the process with your business goals. Address key pain points on your current site, set a realistic timeline, and consider a redesign if needed. Each of these steps will help the migration process.
Align the CMS migration with your business goals and objectives
Before starting the Drupal to WordPress migration, it’s essential to clearly define what you want to accomplish through your CMS migration. Start by outlining your business goals.
Then, set specific objectives for your new website that align with these goals. For each objective, identify measurable criteria to evaluate success. And finally, see if WordPress indeed scores better than Drupal on it.
For instance, many publishers focus on increasing ad revenue. To achieve this, a relevant website objective could be boosting organic traffic by improving SEO. This might involve faster page load times, lower bounce rates, and optimized Core Web Vitals—all of which can be measured. And if you compare Drupal sites with those on WordPress, you’ll see that, when done right, WordPress sites can far outperform Drupal sites when it comes to SEO.
Sometimes, it’s difficult to pinpoint exact metrics, and that’s okay. For example, a company might aim to reduce operational expenses (a business goal) by simplifying their publishing process (a website objective) with WordPress. In this case, success could be measured by how much less the marketing team relies on developers, even if it’s not easily quantifiable.
Review the pain points of your current site
What challenges are your stakeholders—internal teams or end users— facing with Drupal?
How is your Drupal website hindering daily operations?
Identify these issues and document them in detail. All this documentation will be crucial later when you’re planning and implementing specific solutions on WordPress to address these problems.
If you’re considering hiring an agency for your Drupal to WordPress migration, this activity will be beneficial during the discovery process.
Set a timeline for your Drupal to WordPress migration project
CMS migration is a complex project, especially when migrating a large, content-rich website from Drupal to WordPress (which can take several days or even weeks).
With careful planning, you can migrate from Drupal to WordPress with zero downtime. However, it’s wise to prepare for any unexpected challenges. For minimal impact on web traffic and user experience, aim to schedule the migration during non-peak hours in your time zone. This organized approach will simplify the Drupal to WordPress conversion and prevent any data loss or downtime.
If you’re unsure about handling the Drupal to WordPress migration on your own, you can always reach out to a WordPress agency for WordPress migration services.
Considering a redesign
If your timeline permits, migrating to a new CMS is a great opportunity to refresh your website’s user interface, functionality, and overall appearance.
While a redesign will extend the migration timeline, it’s a worthwhile investment.
Exploring hosting options for Drupal to WordPress migration
When planning a Drupal to WordPress migration, choosing the right WordPress hosting is crucial, as your hosting directly impacts your site’s performance and scalability.
With numerous options in the market, selecting the right hosting provider can be a daunting task. Check with your current host if they offer hosting for the WordPress CMS too.
Switching your hosting provider during your migration isn’t always necessary, because your current host can support your new WordPress site if it meets the following criteria:
- It supports PHP 7.4 or higher.
- It supports MySQL , MariaDB or other databases that support WordPress.
- It works with MySQL, MariaDB, and any other databases compatible with WordPress.
In addition to these basic compatibility requirements, ensure your server also:
- Offers 24/7 technical support.
- Provides regular automated backups.
- Includes security features like SSL.
- Is both performance, scalable and reliable.
- Has sufficient storage and bandwidth to meet your site’s requirements.
- Supports WordPress Multisite, which is crucial if your Drupal site includes connected sub-sites (microsites).
You can also consider managed WordPress hosting like WordPress VIP and Pagely. These services are designed to offer excellent performance, robust security, and scalability tailored for WordPress sites. Many also provide uptime guarantees of 99.9%. Prefer going for these over general hosting providers.
Assess features to ensure feature parity post the migration
It’s important to have all the required features you use on your Drupal website are present on the new WordPress stack. A careful consideration of the features list is imperative.
- Are these features already available in WordPress?
- Can you utilize plugins to incorporate these features into WordPress?
- Will custom coding is necessary to implement them?
- Are there any features that are not available on WordPress that you can manage without?
This exercise will help you achieve feature parity when migrating from Drupal to WordPress.
| Features | Needs |
| Headless architecture |  |
| Multilingual support | |
| Personalization | |
| Multisite | |
| E-commerce | |
| Activity logs | |
| Contact forms, Lead magnet and Newsletter form | |
| Accessibility | |
| A/B and Multivariate testing | |
| Drush | |
| Content Scheduling | |
| Analytics | |
| Workflow Customization | |
| Cookie Consent Management | |
Review third-party integrations before moving from Drupal to WordPress
Review your existing third-party integrations and check if they are compatible with WordPress. This step is essential to prevent any functionality issues while moving from Drupal to WordPress. Overall, WordPress offers a much wider selection of third-party integrations than Drupal, so you shouldn’t have any challenges in recreating your third-party tech stack on WordPress.
Here’s a handy table to help:
| Third party tools | Examples | Drupal | Migrate to WordPress |
| CRM | Hubspot, Salesforce, Pipedrive etc. | | |
| CDP | Segment, Piwik Pro etc. | | |
| ERP | SAP, NetSuite, Acumatica etc. | | |
| DAM | Bynder, Aprimo etc. | | |
| Analytics | Google Analytics 4, Parse.ly, Matomo etc. | | |
| LDAP/IAM | Azure AD, JumpCloud, Okta etc. | | |
Setting up a team
Moving from Drupal to WordPress needs both technical and business resources.
Also, it’s important to set up a team that knows both Drupal and WordPress for a successful migration.
You can choose to employ your internal team or consider working with migration experts.
Our team has successfully managed around 300 migrations, including several Drupal to WordPress migrations, feel free to contact our WordPress migration experts.
