If you have a proprietary CMS system with a massive amount of data, files, pictures and videos, then it is better to switch to Drupal. A hugely popular open source content management framework, Drupal is robust, secure and scalable with a rapidly growing community of around 1 million members and 31,000 developers. Drupal is used by some of the world’s leading media and publishing companies, government organizations, corporates, non-profits and educational institutions.

If you are planning for a smoother transition from your existing system to Drupal, there are numerous factors that you need to take in to account. It is always appropriate to do some in-house research on the processes, costs and technology and prepare your entire team for the migration, thus making it a smooth and uninterrupted process.

Migration Strategy: Generally, migrating to any CMS is a tedious, time-consuming and complex process. In order to effectively streamline the workflow of the organization, the first step would be to identify the major issues in migration. You need to have a clear idea as to whether you require migration or upgradation of your current site to Drupal 7. Then, a migration strategy has to be created, taking the following elements in to consideration – content, investments, timeline, viability, potential bottlenecks and final results. This will save you a considerable amount of time and money.

Tips to prepare your site for Drupal migration

Analyzing the requirements: After carefully analyzing the requirements and preparing a quick list of the various functionalities and features that can be properly configured and customized on the Drupal site, you can kickstart the migration process. Please ensure that your Drupal CMS supports third party API integration and is extensible to meet your future business needs. Also, constantly ensure reduced downtime and maximum data access.

Initialize: Please ensure that your project stakeholders are quite familiar with the structure of the legacy content and its use on the new site. The source and destination has to be defined to import data in different formats such as CSV, XML, RSS feeds etc. The fields have to be mapped in Drupal to access data.

Validating the migrated content: Once the fields are populated with data, the migrated content has to be validated in the content management system. If there are no errors, then the data can be processed.

Launching the site: After comprehensive planning and development, the new Drupal website is launched. Few of the highlights of your new Drupal site include organized content types, enhanced usability, intuitive user interface, advanced search options, SEO-friendly URLs and service-oriented architecture.

Upgrade: If you are already using Drupal, you can upgrade from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8. It is a comparatively easy job, if you have good backups and the suitable approach. Upgrading your Drupal website makes it more mobile friendly, provides multilingual capabilities and improves user experience.