Migrating your Drupal website to WordPress
Are you interested in using WordPress instead of Drupal, but already have a lot of content on your existing Drupal website? If so, this tutorial will explain why you may want to use WordPress instead of Drupal, and how to migrate your existing Drupal website content to be using WordPress.
Note: This is a general tutorial for those that are running basic Drupal websites and may not work for everyone. For those that are using custom developed Drupal sites, it is recommended to seek professionals to help with this process.
Why use WordPress over Drupal?
You may be aware of the fact that WordPress is the most used CMS to date. WordPress started out as a CMS for creating blog websites in specific. Now, WordPress can be used for many different instances and is very robust for any type of website instance. The intuitive UI makes content management very simple. Roughly 30% of websites are using WordPress.
Now that you have an understanding of why WordPress is being used, you can learn how to migrate your Drupal website to use WordPress by following the below steps:
Step 1. Install WordPress
To migrate the site, you will have to provision a new WordPress website, while the existing Drupal website is still running. You can do this by using a subdirectory of the Drupal site, or start running the site on your local machine. Download and install WordPress here.
Step 2. Install the FG Drupal to WordPress plugin
For this tutorial, we are going to be using the FG Drupal to WordPress plugin.
Log into the WordPress website, and go to the administrator dashboard. Click on the plugins option in the left menu. Click on add new. Search for FG Drupal to WordPress. You should see on the screen the option to “install now“. Do this and activate the plugin.
As you can see, there are 2 different versions. There is the free version and the paid version. For the free version, you can migrate articles, pages, images, categories and tags. For additional information such as authors, comments and other custom post types, then this would require the premium version. And if you are running a very custom website, it may be best to seek professionals.
Step 3. Configuration
Once you have activated the plugin, click on tools, Import, Drupal.
Fill in the credentials as asked on the page.
Note: In the instance that WordPress is not located on the same server as Drupal, you must copy the Drupal database to the WordPress server using an export/import with phpMyAdmin.
Step 4. Test the database connection
Click on the test database connection button to make sure that the database is configured properly. This is important to make sure you are saving information properly.
Step 5. Start the import
Much like the previous step, simply click on the Start / Resume the import button. This step can take longer depending on the amount of content that is being transferred.
You will see that the import is complete when you receive the message on your screen IMPORT COMPLETE.
Step 6. Updating the internal links
After the import is complete, update the internal links that are included in the content of the post. You can do this by clicking on Modify internal links.
Step 7. Confirm all of the data has been imported
You are finished, now that you have imported all of the data, it is good to do a double check to see if all of the data has successfully been migrated. Browse through the administrator dashboard, and check the website to ensure everything is there.
You can now make modifications, or install a theme to the site, and make the site live if it is not live already.
If you have any questions or concerns about this process or would like to seek professional help, you can contact Devradius for professional help.
You can also watch this video for more information: