Handling content migration

Handling content during migration plays a critical role in the Drupal to WordPress conversion process. This step lays the foundation for a successful transition by ensuring the accurate and efficient transfer of all your important data.

This includes essential elements such as posts, pages, and media, which must be carefully managed to maintain the integrity of your site’s content.

Start with a content audit

Conducting a content audit will help you identify all the content on your Drupal site that needs to be migrated to WordPress.

Here’s how to conduct a content audit specifically for your migration:

1. Assess content structure: Examine how your content is organized on your Drupal site. Review menus and taxonomies to understand how everything fits together. This will assist you in setting up content types, vocabularies, terms, and tags in WordPress.
2. Use core functions: Take advantage of Drupal’s built-in features like “Views” or “Migrate” to generate a comprehensive content inventory. Your inventory should include all content types along with their parameters, URLs, and publishing dates.
3. Organize your findings: Compile the extracted data into a clear and well-structured spreadsheet for easy reference.
4. Identify key content: Look for outdated, irrelevant, or duplicate information. Use analytics to highlight your most valuable content, which should be moved first.

By following these steps, you can streamline the migration process and significantly reduce the risk of data loss.

Implement a content freeze

During the Drupal to wordPress migration, adding new content to your Drupal site can complicate and extend the process. To avoid this, put your Drupal site into freeze mode after exporting the content and crucial data. This means halting all new content or data updates once the export has started.

Freezing content updates ensures that there’s no confusion about what has been transferred and what still needs to be moved, leading to a smoother and more efficient migration.

Safeguard your SEO rankings

With your content audit complete, your new WordPress site is already clear of outdated irrelevant content, focusing solely on high-quality material. This not only improves user experience but also strengthens your SEO.

Here are a few crucial steps to further protect your SEO rankings:

Transfer SEO metadata

Maintaining your SEO metadata is essential for preserving your search rankings. Review your Drupal site’s SEO elements, including but not limited to metadata, page titles, and descriptions, schema and document it. Plugins like Yoast SEO make it easy to add and manage SEO metadata in WordPress.

Track site performance and Core Web Vitals

Use tools like PageSpeed Insights, Lighthouse, and GTMetrix to evaluate your site’s Core Web Vitals and performance before migration. Document these metrics to compare and troubleshoot any performance issues post-migration.

Implement URL redirects

If you’re keeping the same URL structure in WordPress, redirections may not be necessary. However, if you’re altering URLs (such as adopting a more user-friendly permalink structure), make sure to set up redirects to prevent broken links and maintain SEO value. WordPress provides simple tools to handle URL redirects effectively.

Get in touch for reliable WordPress migration services customized to meet your specific requirements.