Clearly define business goals and website objectives

What do you wish to achieve with this migration? The business goals you want to accomplish should be clear to you. 

Once this is done, set clear objectives that the new website should meet to help you accomplish these business goals, and set measurable success criteria for each objective.

Here’s an example. For many publishing brands, a business goal is to increase ad revenue. One of the objectives for the website that ties into this business goal is driving more traffic by achieving higher SERP rankings. This objective can be met with faster load times, lower bounce rates, better Core Web Vitals, etc.- all measurable success criteria.

In some cases it’s difficult to set measurable success criteria, and that’s okay. For example, some organizations reduce their operational costs (business goal) by making the publishing process more efficient (website objective) by simply moving to WordPress. The success criteria here is reducing the marketing team’s reliance on developers, which may not be directly measurable.

Pinpoint pain points with your current website

What are the pain points of your stakeholders, whether it’s your own team or the end users of your website? How is the Drupal website getting in the way of day-to-day operations? Pinpoint problems and list them down in detail. This will help you later in scoping out and planning for specific solutions in WordPress to solve these problems.

Plan and strategize for a seamless migration

Consider the size and complexity of the website, content volume, the specific Drupal version and the level of customization (modules, themes, functionalities). Additionally, evaluate the user base, the types of content and any maintenance challenges facing Drupal.

Estimate the migration timeframe 

Simple Drupal sites can be moved to WordPress in a few weeks. Complex ones with lots of customizations may take months. 

Plan in advance for minimal downtime during migration  

It is possible to migrate from Drupal to WordPress with zero downtime, but you should still plan for potential website outages. To ensure minimal disruption to your web traffic and user experience, schedule the migration in the wee hours of your time zone.

Choose a hosting platform

Changing your hosting provider when moving from Drupal to WordPress is not absolutely necessary. Your current hosting setup will be compatible with the new WordPress website if:

•  It supports PHP 7.4+, and
• It supports MySQL or MariaDB databases 

Besides these basic WordPress compatibility requirements, ensure that your server:

• Comes with 24/7 technical support 
• Includes regular automated backups
• Includes security features like SSL
• Is performant and reliable
• Has enough storage and bandwidth for your site’s needs
• Supports WordPress Multisite. This feature is essential if your Drupal website has connected sub-sites (microsites).

Consider Managed WordPress Hosting Options   

Managed WordPress hosting providers leverage in-depth platform expertise to provide superior performance, security, and scalability for WordPress websites. Some also offer features like 99.9%-plus uptime SLAs. Managed WordPress hosting will cause few hosting-related problems in the long term. Prefer going for these over general hosting providers.

Like Acquia for Drupal, hosting providers like WordPress VIP, Pagely provide enterprise-grade managed hosting for WordPress.

Backup your Drupal website

A backup will let you reduce downtime by restoring your Drupal site in case any issues arise during the migration. Create secure copies on external storage and an off-site backup for an additional layer of security. 

A Drupal backup and migrate involves three things- database backup, root directory backup, and a backup of the media files.

Take a backup of the database  

The Drupal database contains content files, configuration files, user information, settings, and logs history. Use tools like phpMyAdmin or command-line options like MySQL dump to create a compressed .sql file of the Drupal database.

Take a backup of the Drupal Root Directory   

The Drupal root directory contains the core files, modules directory, theme directory, and custom code libraries. Here’s how to back up your Drupal root directory:

1. Access your server using an FTP client or your hosting control panel.
2. Navigate to the directory where the Drupal site is installed. 
3. Select and download all the files and folders in this directory to your computer.
4. Store this backup securely on an external hard drive and a reliable cloud storage service.

Take a backup of the media files  

To take a backup of the media files, first locate the directory where your media files are stored, typically sites/default/files. Access your server via a secure method like SFTP or SSH and download this directory to your local machine using a client like FileZilla or terminal commands (scp or rsync for SSH).

Consider creating an additional backup for the media files with the help of a Digital Asset Management (DAM) service or cloud storage like Amazon S3. This is particularly useful if you have a large media repository, plus it adds an extra layer of safety for the media files with a remote backup.

Backup Components and Security Measures  

Your backup should include a complete copy of the file system (themes, modules, and uploaded content) and exported configuration files. Always consider version control systems like GitHub for code backups. Perform a full backup before starting the migration and set up incremental backups to capture ongoing changes. Establish a retention policy, such as keeping daily backups for a week and weekly backups for a month.

Verification and security are crucial. Test your backups by restoring them in a staging environment and document the process for team reference. Encrypt sensitive data as well. Always store backups separately from the live site, label them clearly with date and site version information, and verify them regularly.

Run a content audit

You should always move important content first during a migration. Running a content audit will help you identify this content. It will also help you create a game plan to transfer the content.

Here’s how to run a content audit limited to the purpose of a website migration:

1. Analyze the structure of the content on your Drupal website, through menus and through taxonomy. This will help you later in configuring your content types, vocabularies, terms and tags into their WordPress counterparts.
2. Use Drupal’s core functionalities like “Views” or “Migrate” to extract a comprehensive inventory of the content. This inventory should list all the content types along with their corresponding parameters, URLs, and publishing dates.
3. Consolidate the extracted data into a well-structured spreadsheet.
4. Identify outdated, irrelevant, or duplicate information. Use your website analytics data to segregate the most important content. These are the items that should be moved first.

This approach will minimize the risk of data loss by streamlining the transfer process.

Freeze the content on the Drupal Site   

Adding new content to the Drupal site after running the content audit can cause confusion during the migration about what has already been transferred and what hasn’t. To avoid this, stop all content and data updates to the Drupal site after the content audit.

Select micro sites and multisites to be migrated

Identify all micro sites or multisites connected with the main site by examining the site’s structure for subdomains or subdirectories and checking all indexed URLs. Select the ones  to be migrated and document them to ensure they are included in the migration plans.

Secure Your SEO Rankings

Thanks to the content audit, your new WordPress website is already rid of outdated and irrelevant content and will only be serving high-quality content. This is great not only for user experience but also for SEO.

There are a few more things you must take care of to secure your SEO rankings.

Transfer SEO metadata   

Keeping SEO metadata intact is the most important thing when it comes to preserving your website’s SEO rankings. Check your Drupal site’s SEO elements like metadata, page titles, and descriptions. Create a plan to transfer this data. You can use plugins like Yoast SEO and Rank Math to easily and intuitively add SEO metadata in WordPress.

Document site performance reports and Core Web Vitals   

Use tools like PageSpeed Insights, Lighthouse, and GTMetrix to check the website’s Core Web Vitals and other performance factors before the migration. Document these reports as they’ll be useful when debugging any performance issues after the migration.

Redirect ‘URLs’ from Drupal pages to the new WordPress site   

If URLs you’re keeping all URLs the same after moving to WordPress, URL redirection is not necessary. However, if you decide to change the URL structure when moving from Drupal to WordPress for whatever reason, (for example, if you decide to make all permalinks pretty) make sure you implement those redirects. This too is easy to do on WordPress.