Adding and editing a website content nowadays is way easier than it was just 10-15 years ago. Modern content management systems (CMS) are more user-friendly, more secure, and much faster compared to their predecessors.
One such platform is Drupal. It’s open-source (free), has a large army of followers among the development community, and is favored by some of the biggest organizations on the planet, the Economist and White House among others.
So, if you’re using another platform and are not happy with its performance, it’s high time to migrate to Drupal. Prior to this move, though, there is a whole list of issues to be addressed and questions to be answered before you find a suitable Drupal migration company.
You will definitely wonder how much money you’ll have to spend and what exactly you’ll have to do during the migration process. As for the price, no Drupal migration company will give you the same number: websites differ in size, level of security, and have their own specific features.
With that being said, it’s in your power to take some pre-migration steps. They will help your staff be better prepared for moving over to the new platform and significantly reduce your expenses. Below, we’ve listed the top 4 tips for how to migrate to Drupal more efficiently and more cheaply.
1. Create the Migration “Road Map”
You can go to one and the same destination by different routes. Some are longer and more complicated than others. Migration from one platform to another involves picking the optimal course too. So, working out a road map is crucial before you even contact a Drupal migration company. Ask yourself:
- what kinds of problems you can’t allow happening when migrating your site
- how much time should pass before you receive an ROI on migration
- how you see your MVP (minimal viable product)
- whether migration is really worth the money you’re planning to spend
- whether you really have to move all your assets like tags, users, metadata, and content to the new platform
- by what date you expect the migration process to finish
- what member of your team will be in charge of the entire operation
A Drupal migration company would have asked you all those questions anyway. That means you can spare their and your own time. And we all know that time is money.
2. Look into the Technical Aspects of Your Present Website
Get together your marketing and IT professionals for the technical overview of your current website. The more details you manage to discuss, the better. Among other things, get your team to answer these questions:
- How many hours are the IT and marketing departments going to spend communicating with a Drupal migration company?
- How does the present site arrange data not included in the content?
- Are you going to integrate any CRM (customer relationship management system) for automatic operations?
- What is the type of the repository where the current site keeps data?
- What tools have other businesses in your niche employed to move their assets to Drupal?
- What methods have other companies in your niche employed to speed up the migration process and avoid long periods of inactivity?
3. Look into the Business Aspects of Your Present Website
Developers at a Drupal migration company will also find it important to know how exactly your business uses the site. Make sure you know:
- in what ways migration will improve your business processes
- whether you will need any refinement of your design or whether you will need some new features that your present site lacks
- what components make up your current site
- which of your present site’s components should be moved over to the new platform
- whether your future Drupal site will need to be integrated with some old, cumbersome systems (customer databases or external libraries)
4. Make Sure Your Drupal Version Is Up to Date
As Drupal is not a new CMS, many companies have already based their sites on it. If this is the case for your business, congratulations! Less (or no) money to spend, even though working with a Drupal migration company is highly advisable.
Whether you decide to perform Drupal-Drupal migration on your own or prefer seeking professional assistance, there’s a couple of things you should be aware of:
- You can’t jump over major versions of Drupal (or you just need to create your website from a scratch). To move up from Drupal 6 to Drupal 8, for instance, you have to upgrade your system to version 7 first.
- Some modules that your present version of Drupal has may not have equivalents for the next version. That’s particularly true when upgrading from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8. So, review the list of your modules before you migrate, and remove those that are not compatible with the new version.
Conclusions & Drupal migration company
Spend some time thinking about the points we’ve covered in this post, and you will considerably reduce the bill a Drupal development company may submit to you. We wish you smooth and painless migration! If you’ll have any questions or you’ll need to migrate your website to CMS Drupal, we are here to help! Just contact us and we will jump in the process. Also, you can see our portfolio on the world-leading platform Clutch.co.
