The fight between Drupal and Wordpress has been long going. While some users are gaga over the features of WordPress, others drool upon the framework of Drupal. One way or another, there is a whole support team for both the CMS.
However, knowing that which CMS is best for your business is what makes the difference.
No matter if you are operating an e-commerce business or a finance website, choosing the right one for your future ventures is what would set you apart.
Even if it means that you need to migrate from one CMS to another, where your current web host fails to fulfil your needs, transferring your website to a new host should be considered.
In this write-up, we would be discussing Drupal to WordPress Migration. How the migration would be helpful for your website, and what additional benefits you would be blessed with when you are working with the CMS.
Let’s get started
But Before the Migration Process
Before you hire WordPress Developer, there are various things that the user requires to check before they start their migration journey from Drupal to WordPress. Thus, keep in mind some of the following important points that are necessary before the user migrates the site from one CMS to different.
- Backing up the website: The very first task that the user needs to accomplish is to back up their site before the user starts up with the migration. Not backing up the website would mean losing up of immense data which would result in future hurdles.
- Not leaving behind the critical content: The user needs to analyze their website and create a spreadsheet of all the content. You may find much-outdated contents that are of no use, and that can be left behind.
- Setting up a plan: Ask yourself what exactly do you need when or looking for to achieve with the help of the migration task. You need to be focused on the fact that what you want to migrate, including the domain name, website architecture, design, hosting, content, and so on.
- Preserving SEO: To ensure SEO preservation, the user needs to use services that crawl the website and tends to export the URLs to understand the architecture of the site easily.
Set-up time for migration: Migrating your website can consume a lot of time. That is because it sometimes depends on the site size and also the amount of content. Thus, the user can try to migrate there site during the non-busy hours of the business.
Why Migrate Drupal to WordPress
When it comes to the Drupal to WordPress migration there are many advantages that can be witnessed with the shift. Some of the advantages that would best contribute to the users would include:
1. WordPress Dominates 33.6% Market Share of all Websites
According to the recent study by Kinsta WordPress tends to dominate 33.6% of the market share of all the website. This means that users all around the world are choosing WordPress more as compared to the other CMS in the market. Thus making it one of the no.one CMS in the market.
2. WordPress is not a Costly Affair
For the people whose main factor comes down to the budget, they would be glad to know that a Drupal website costs around $40-100k whereas a WordPress Website development organization would costs about $10-50k. This means that the platform is highly economical. Especially for the organization that are starting to set up their business.
3. WordPress is Easier to Use
You would be glad to know that the learning curve of this platform is really easy as compared to Drupal.
WordPress tends to contain features such as drag and drop editor, content editing and media management. These type of facilities can easily be used by any individual. Even for the ones that are using bit for the first time, and have no previous experience related to it.
4. WordPress Provides with Improved SEO
One of the most vital advantages of WordPress is that the user tends to experience an optimized version of the SEO. Just by utilizing the basic version of WordPress, the user has the scope to benefit better technical SEO than by using any Drupal modules.
The user can utilize plugins like Yoast SEO or All-in-one SEO which is useful for social media because the user can repurpose post content for Facebook and Twitter.
5. WordPress has a Very Large Community
One of the greatest benefit of using WordPress is that it is one of the most popular CMS, and thus it consists of large community. It is a large ecosystem of developers, online manuals, and much more. The platform produces hundreds of themes, plugins and Saas services, thus consisting of a large community. It also consists of experts that are fluent in WordPress theme development, thus making it easy for the new learners to adapt the environment.
Is WordPress Capable of Providing Similar or More Features than Drupal?
Now that we have discussed features of WordPress, you might have made a decision. The decision of migrating from Drupal to WordPress, and I am guessing you would have several dilemmas too. You might be asking this question – whether WordPress would be able to give you the similar benefits that Drupal was providing you earlier or even more. Well, let’s compare both these CMS, and see:
| Feature | Drupal | WordPress |
| Users | Administrative users or“end users”can edit the website | Administrative users or“end users”can edit the WordPress web development with the addition of custom fields to user profiles. |
| Roles and Permissions | Users are defined by their role. Roles are defined by permission. | Creation of different roles on the WordPress website is possible with the power to limit the content created and content viewed. |
| Content Types | Own content types can be created | You can create your own content type with the advantage of enjoying default types “post” and “page” |
| Blocks | The user can create blocks with the help of block module | The user can create blocks with the help of block editor. These blocks can be used add both static and dynamic content, templates and display content |
| Menu and Menu Items | The user can create menu and the navigating items with the help of modules. | It is similar to Drupal, the only difference is that in WordPress the user creates the content first and then adds the menu later. |
| Vocabulary and Tags | Drupal allows you to create any kind of vocabulary and lets you construct different taxonomies | Users in WordPress can do the exact same thing as in Drupal. |
| Views | Allows the designer to create, manage, and display lists of content. | WordPress views is almost similar to the functionality of Drupal views. The only difference is that views has simpler UI that provides more options for templates and display. |
| Entities | Drupal entities lets the user add media, paragraphs and other features. | WordPress does not contain entities like Drupal, but user can recreate them. The users can use posts and posts-meta tables instead. |
Steps Included to Convert Drupal to WordPress
Now that you are aware of the features that WordPress customization posses, migrating from Drupal to WordPress wont be a tedious task. Thus, for successfully migrating the two platforms the user needs to follow these steps:
Step 1: Get Appropriate Hosting
Let us assume this fact that the user that wants to migrate from Drupal to WordPress already has a hosting provider installed. Verify that before you start with the migration process you need to check out that the host supports WordPress installation or not.
If the WordPress installation is not supported by the host then you need to get an appropriate hosting within the budget you have set.
Step2: Installation of the plugin
To complete this step the user needs to know that they would be operating FG Drupal site to WordPress plugin to complete the process. This plugin is very easy to use and would cover up most of the installation process. However, if the user is looking to migrate things that include comments, various authors, and even the custom post types then they would need the premium version.
The very first thing that the user needs to do is log into the new WordPress website and locate the plugin followed by add new button. Next, type FG Drupal site to WordPress in the search bar, and press install after it is done. After the installation and every other thing is done, the user needs to activate the plugin.
Step3: Learning the Drupal Database Parameters
Before you pull up your socks and start using the plugins, you new to locate few parameters. These includes username, password, hostname, and database name along with prefixes. Hence, the user should be aware of the above list. However, if they have no ideas regarding the same then they can find the remaining ones in Drupal installation core file with the help of FTP (file transfer protocol) client, and access them using the client and navigate default directory.
Next, you would find settings.php file, you need to open it using your favourite editor and then find out the parameters that were specified earlier.
Step4: Import the content from Drupal to WordPress
Next, the user needs to go to the WordPress dashboard and then select the tool button. If the plugin is already installed then the user would witness a new Drupal option within the import menu.
The user needs to tap on the run importer button where they would find a new page with the collection settings to configure. Now the user needs to type or paste the data that they have located under the Drupal database parameter section.
Now, the user needs to configure on how the plugin will import into the Drupal post summaries and files that are related to the media. By selecting the import summary, and then clicking onto the content which imports the “Read more” link the user needs to select options as per their likeness and move ahead into media option.
Case Study Involving Capgemini
In 2012 an organization named Capgemini launched a series of the website with the help of Drupal 7. The organization evolved significantly, and the team started experiencing blockers at almost every stage of publishing. Soon they realized that they had outgrown the content publishing needs, and now they require a new platform.
To free up the technical load and complexity that was surrounded to content publishing, Capgemini made a shift from Drupal 7 to WordPress.
Human Made helped Capgemini to enable the new digital creation, and deliver their business objective by empowering global networks to operate their work effectively.
They adapted to the practice quickly as the learning curve for the team to start using WordPress was secure and reliable. The shift also helped the development team to tackle up with complexities and allowed several people across the company to utilize and publish data. Thus, making WordPress as their primary platform, Capgemini underwent a complex migration of 38 websites and content syndication across the local and main website
Conclusion
The quarrel between WordPress and Drupal is just like Tom and Jerry. Some are the true believers of one CMS; for another one, they cannot think of any flaw. Whatever may be the reason the end goal is to deliver results that match with the expectations and needs. Whether it is a WordPress Development Company or a Drupal-based organization, picking up the right CMS is essential.
True Drupal is being adopted by many users out there, but neglecting the fact that WordPress is one of the oldest and no. One platform would be like ignoring treasure. Therefore, to bring out better return of investment for developers, agency and clients – WordPress is the hero for you. True, the thought of shift from one platform to another platform would give you the jitters, but trust me the migration is not as tedious as it seems. The plugins and smooth learning curve have made the task easy and efficient.
We hope that by now you would be convinced by the fact that the shift from Drupal to WordPress is not only beneficial for you, but it would instead bring you features that would make your work easy. If you want to share any thoughts and reviews regarding the same, then you can leave a comment or your views in the comment section below. Our WordPress experts and professionals would try to solve it and answer the same.
This post first appeared on WordPress Plugins Are Indispensable, Yet Come Wit, please read the originial post: here
