As Drupal 7 reaches its end of life, now is the time to migrate from Drupal to WordPress.
Migrating a website to WordPress takes time and effort that seems rather daunting if there’s no need to make the change. However, the Drupal 7 and 8 end of life announcement means that those who are not on Drupal 9 by November 2021 will most likely experience website issues.
What better time is there to migrate to WordPress?
Let’s take a look at why you should never use expired software on your site; the advantages of migrating to WordPress from Drupal 7; and how you can prepare your content for migration.
What are the Implications of Expired Software?
When Drupal 7 reaches its end of life, it will no longer be supported by the larger Drupal community or receive important security updates. It may even hurt your website’s authority by getting flagged as insecure.
These changes will profoundly affect your website’s health. Here are the three biggest issues you might encounter:
- Your site might start malfunctioning and stop working in random ways. Updates are important to keep your site running smoothly and compatible with the technologies you’ve integrated. If something you integrated on your site is updated and Drupal 7 doesn’t support that update, your site will most likely break.
- You risk getting hacked when you use out of date software on your site. Anything that’s not receiving updates and new security patches almost always presents vulnerabilities that are easy for hackers to exploit.
- Your search engine rankings will suffer because out of date software that is no longer supported is often flagged as insecure by third parties. Website security is important for most search engine ranking algorithms.
You might be asking yourself:
If out of date software is the issue, why not just migrate to Drupal 9?
Going from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 or 9 is not very easy to do. In fact, it’s taking many Drupal developers months to accomplish. So, why not switch to WordPress now?
The Advantage of Migrating to WordPress from Drupal 7
We recommend switching from Drupal 7 to WordPress because future updates on WordPress are much simpler to maintain. On WordPress, you won’t need to worry about rebuilding your site every time a major update comes out.
That’s just one of the reasons WordPress is the most used content management system.
WordPress powers 35% of the web and 60% of sites built with content management systems.
– Source: Web Technology Surveys
WordPress updates are generally developed with backward compatibility so that the older versions still work, even if unsupported. Plus, usually WordPress updates are usually not as hard to handle as the leap from Drupal 7 to 8 or 9. In fact, you often get to reap the benefits of new features without changing anything.
Migrating your site from Drupal 7 to WordPress now will save you time and money in the long run.
How to Prepare Your Website to Migrate from Drupal to WordPress
With any website migration, or build, organizing your content is the most important step. Search engines watch the content on your website and keep track of how it’s connected. Changing this drastically when you migrate could result in a loss of the SEO you’ve built over time.
What are we talking about when we say “content?”
- Pages
- Blog Posts
- Media Uploads (like photos and videos)
- Custom Post Types (portfolios, etc.)
Your website’s database structure changes when you go from Drupal to WordPress, so you need to document your content clearly. Create a spreadsheet and list the page titles and permalinks (URLs). Take notes on which pages are top level menu items, or easy to see on your main menu. Then, make sure you document which pages or posts need to go under “parent” items. Add your categories and tags to the sheet as well.
Make sure you also gather your original image and media files in case of database issues. Or, get new ones to refresh the look of your site.
Then, decide:
- Is there any out-of-date content on your site?
- Should the out-of-date content be updated or deleted and redirected?
- Is there a change to the structure or design you want to make while you’re migrating?
After you organize your content, give it your chosen WordPress migration developer. If you’ve chosen to migrate your site yourself, this spreadsheet will be where you keep track of the migration. It ensures all pages and posts are set up correctly.
Migrate from Drupal 7 to WordPress with Materiell
Migrating a website from one content management system to another is never easy. Hiring a developer that’s familiar with migrations will help you get your site updated quickly with the least amount of friction.
Materiell can help you with more than just migrating your site. We also provide you with custom wordpress development, hosting, and support, and maintenance if you choose. Please contact us to get a quote on migrating your Drupal 7 site to WordPress. Or, schedule a demo to see everything Materiell can do for you.