Drupal to WordPress Migration Service

There are several Drupal to WordPress migration plugins and automated services available. Maybe they'll work for your site, in which case our migration service is not for you. Indeed, migration plugins can convert Drupal content that have a clearly defined counterpart within WordPress. They do fall short in some important ways, however. A great deal of the most valuable content is routinely configured in ways that need human decisions. Which migration approach should be taken? How closely will the approach meet your project's goals? Will one WordPress plugin or another better suit your workflow? What kind of compromises must you make? These are critical decisions that cannot be automated.

If you're looking for a Drupal to WordPress migration service, chances are that you've tried a plugin and it failed. Alternatively, you might recognise that you need advice from an expert. Many clients come to us because they tried a migration plugin and for some reason they weren't satisfied with the results. A custom migration service will inevitably cost more than an off-the-shelf plugin but if your website plays an important role in your activity, human experience will provide more value than short-term savings.

To get started with your project, we'll need:

• A MySQL dump file or access to your database;
• Information about what kind of content you want to migrate. We can give you a more precise estimate for your migration project during the project discovery phase.

Find out about how to get started with a Drupal to WordPress migration project.

There are other options with a variety of pricing models. Our Drupal to WordPress migration service is for media agencies and site owners who need a WordPress database specialist to work with them throughout the migration process. We understand that it's often unnecessary to pay someone to do everything. For example, media agencies often have staff in-house who are great at design and front-end coding; they often don't need to invest time investigating the inner workings of Drupal and WordPress. Site-owners without technical or programming skill can do some tasks manually using the WordPress dashboard, thereby reducing the overall budget needed.

You deal with the migration team directly and we tailor the migration to the specific needs of your project. There are no set limits to the amount or type of content you can migrate. We work together closely to discover how best to approach the migration. Between us, we will strike a balance between your budget and work needed for you to comfortably take over your new WordPress site.

Yes. There are two options when migrating your site:-

1. Content only
This is for when you already have a web developer to build your WordPress site and you only want to export the Drupal content. To do this, all we'll need is your Drupal database dump file or access to your database.

2. Full migration
Aside from the content, a full migration would also include setting up WordPress, replicating functionality and either replicating the design as a WordPress theme or doing a re-design. This is essentially building a new site from scratch so in order to quote for this, we'd need either a specification document or access to your Drupal site in order to create one.

We'll first run a database diagnostic on a copy of your Drupal installation. This is to analyse the scope of the project and to check if there might be any issues with the migration. (Sometimes, previously installed buggy modules cause problems.) Once we've identified and fixed any potential issues, we'll then run our standard migration script to get the first usable export. We define a 'useable export' as one where you can theoretically continue without our help, perhaps by finishing up through the WordPress control panel UI. You're therefore never 'locked in' to our service.

At this stage you will have:

• A basic installation of WordPress on a generic theme on our test server. This will let you inspect the migrated content to get an idea of how it will look at your end.
• A MySQL dump file that you can import into your database.

For many site owners, manual finishing up of a typical Drupal to WordPress migration project can be quite tedious, especially on sites with lots of content, custom content types and functionality. An important part of what we do is saving you time by writing custom scripts that will fine-tune the results to your requirements. While the first export is fairly simple to run, further customisation is very much an iterative process of fine tuning until you're satisfied with the end result. The more you need us to do, the more budget you'll need.

On average, we recommend leaving at least six weeks from project sign-off. Large migration projects can take several months.

No, the amount of content to be migrated is rarely a factor in project price, complexity and time. We write a set of custom migration scripts after analysing your site and requirements. The scripts can be run many times on your entire database and will do the 'heavy lifting' of the migration project. The major factors that usually affect project price, complexity and time are:

• the number of custom content types;
• replicating Drupal modules as WordPress plugins;
• preserving SEO;
• the web design process for custom themes.

We use a variety of custom-built tools and scripts, mostly coded in Python, that we've built throughout the years. We also use freely available open source software like MySQL Workbench and phpMyAdmin.

Acknowledgements for our Drupal to WordPress Migration Tool:

• Scott Anderson of Room 34 Creative Services. The queries for migrating from Drupal to WordPress are based on a post at the Room 34 blog: How I migrated a client's blog from Drupal to WordPress 3.0
• David Coveney of Interconnect IT Ltd (UK). We used UI elements of Interconnect IT's WordPress Search and Replace Tool as a starting point to create the in-house scripts on which this tool is based. WordPress (and others) Search and Replace Tool
• Drupal is a registered trademark of Dries Buytaert
• WordPress is a trademark of The WordPress Foundation

We can migrate any Drupal version.

Yes, we comply with the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Under the GDPR, I'm classed as a data processor since our work involves obtaining, storing and processing databases which may contain personal information. As a small firm, the regulations are far more lenient for us. Nevertheless, in order to meet our clients' own GDPR-compliance, we have put in place the following measures:

• Our privacy policy has been updated for GDPR compliance.
• For each project, we only request the minimum amount of migration data to complete the project requirements.
• We delete migration databases and backups within 90 days after a project close-down. This length of time is necessary and reasonable as completed projects can sometimes restart with new requirements.
• We only work with third-party contractors or agencies who have been approved by our clients. When working with third-parties, we only transfer migration data to the contractor or agency after obtaining explicit permission from our client.
• We only use services that are PCI, DPA and GDPR compliant.
• We record migration database transfers to service providers in countries outside the European Economic Area (EEA).
• Full-disk encryption; encrypted communications and file transfers; and two factor authentication are enabled whenever possible to help prevent data breaches.
• In order to help detect if we've been breached, 'bugs' and 'honeypots' are implanted within our systems.
• If a data breach occurs that poses a risk to people's rights and freedoms, the project sponsor will be informed as soon as the breach is discovered.

Case study 1: Local news site

A site with over 45,000 Drupal nodes. Despite having a large amount of content, the migration was relatively straightforward because the client had a basic Drupal setup consisting of pages, stories and a few simple custom content types. They did not need any special functionality replicated.

Timescales: Migration completed within two weeks of starting the project.

Main challenges presented:

1. Errors during import due to incorrect character encoding when the client made the database dump. This was easily fixed by showing the client how to correctly dump the database.
2. Target WordPress environment kept running out of memory after export. This was solved by adjusting the client's server configuration.
3. The client did not know how to operate their hosting control panel so this project also required unexpected sys-admin work.

Case study 2: Special interest site with global readership

A site with around 20,000 nodes, 4,000 terms and 10,000 user profiles.

Timescales: approximately 7 weeks from first enquiry email.

Main challenges presented:

1. There were many duplicate terms that needed to be handled and cleaned using custom queries. (Duplicate terms cannot be migrated into WordPress.)
2. An old Drupal module caused hard-to-find corruption that was causing the migration queries to fail. This was tracked down to a few entries that were incorrectly had a creation year of 1970.
3. We needed to write many custom queries to handle very specific migration requirements. (e.g. removing unwanted posts, removing spam comments and authors, resolving duplicate content.)

Search engine optimisation is a complex topic. The short answer is yes, we will be able to preserve your SEO. In practical terms, how much is preserved depends on your budget. If SEO is a primary concern, please let us know and we can discussion your options in detail. For more information about preserving SEO during a Drupal to WordPress migration, please see this guide.

• UK-based clients may pay by bank transfer to our Pound Sterling UK bank account. All prices are exclusive of VAT unless otherwise specified.
• International clients may pay into our US Dollar or Euro bank account, or by Bitcoin, PayPal or credit card. Other payment methods may incur additional transaction charges.

If you need more information before starting your migration project, feel free to read through our archive of Drupal to WordPress migration posts. The following might be of particular interest:

• How to prepare for your Drupal to WordPress migration project
• Preserving SEO during a Drupal to WordPress migration
• Drupal to WordPress migration worksheet
• How to write a Drupal to WordPress migration mapping document
• Drupal to WordPress migration guide