Drupal To WordPress Migration

Drupal is a powerful, highly scalable CMS, but that power comes with a steep learning curve. Simple content changes often need developer support, layout updates can be slow, and ongoing maintenance adds up. That’s why more businesses are planning a Drupal to WordPress migration: to make day-to-day publishing easier for non-technical teams while keeping the scalability their site needs.

This guide walks through everything you need for a smooth Drupal to WordPress migration, from what to prepare beforehand, to how LitExtension moves your products, customers, orders, and reviews into WooCommerce safely, to what to check once your new WordPress site is live.

Why Migrate from Drupal to WordPress

Drupal 7, one of the most widely used Drupal versions ever released, has already reached end of life and no longer receives official security updates, which leaves sites still running on it increasingly exposed. That alone pushes many Drupal 7 site owners to consider a move, but it’s far from the only reason teams choose WordPress:

• Easier for non-technical teams: WordPress’s editor and dashboard are built for content editors, not just developers, so marketing and content teams can publish and update pages without waiting on a developer for every small change.
• A much larger plugin ecosystem: WordPress has well over 59,000 free plugins covering nearly any feature you’d need, compared to Drupal’s smaller, more developer-oriented module ecosystem.
• Lower development and maintenance costs: WordPress sites are generally cheaper to build and maintain than comparable Drupal sites, since less specialized development time is required for routine work.
• Stronger built-in SEO foundation: WordPress offers customizable title tags, clean permalinks, and a wide range of SEO plugins to build on top of that foundation.
• A larger, more accessible community: with WordPress powering a large share of the web, it’s easier to find developers, documentation, and support when you need it.

Drupal vs. WordPress: How Core Concepts Map Over

One of the first questions people have when planning a Drupal to WordPress migration is whether WordPress can actually replicate what they’re used to in Drupal. The short answer is yes, though the terminology and structure differ. Here’s a quick reference:

Common Challenges When Migrating Drupal to WordPress

Knowing what tends to go wrong ahead of time makes a Drupal to WordPress migration far less stressful. Here are the issues that come up most often, and how to stay ahead of them:

• Data corruption or loss: always work from a complete backup of your Drupal database and files, so you have a fallback if anything goes wrong mid-migration.
• SEO ranking drops: this almost always comes down to missing or incorrect 301 redirects. Carefully map every old Drupal URL to its new WordPress equivalent, set up redirects (our Drupal redirect guide walks through this in detail), and submit an updated sitemap to Google Search Console once you’re live.
• Missing custom functionality: audit what your Drupal modules actually do before migrating, and identify the closest WordPress plugin equivalents ahead of time rather than discovering gaps after launch.
• Content structure mismatches: Drupal’s nodes, taxonomy, and Views don’t map one-to-one onto WordPress. Plan your custom post types and taxonomies clearly before you migrate, rather than trying to force-fit content afterward.
• Multisite and multilingual complexity: if your Drupal installation runs multiple sites or languages, plan your WordPress structure (multisite network, language plugin, or separate installs) before migration starts, since retrofitting this after the fact is far more work.

Prerequisites for a Drupal to WordPress Migration

A bit of preparation upfront makes the actual migration go far more smoothly. Here’s what to take care of first:

• Back up your Drupal website: create a complete backup of your database and files before touching anything. Our Drupal backup and migrate guide covers the module-based approach if you’d rather not do this manually.
• Audit your content: review your custom blocks, nodes, media assets, Views, and taxonomy structure. Note what’s outdated and what’s genuinely worth carrying over, along with SEO metadata, authoring information, and publish dates.
• Keep your Drupal database credentials handy: you’ll find these in your Drupal installation’s settings.php file if you need to reference them during the process. If you plan to export data yourself at any point, our Drupal export guide walks through the available methods.
• Prepare your target WordPress site: install the latest version of WordPress on hosting that suits your traffic and performance needs.
• List your important internal links: Drupal’s URL structure won’t match WordPress’s by default, so note which links get traffic or backlinks and need a redirect after the move.
• Decide DIY vs. professional migration: a simple blog with no custom functionality is manageable in-house. A large, complex Drupal site with custom modules and multiple content types is usually better handled by migration experts.

How to Migrate Drupal to WordPress with LitExtension

Once your prerequisites are in place, LitExtension’s All-in-One service handles the rest of your Drupal to WordPress migration for you. Here’s how the process works from start to finish.

Step 1. Technical consultation with LitExtension experts

Your migration starts with a personalized consultation with our technical team. We review your Drupal site’s structure, size, and any custom modules or content types in use, then define exactly what needs to move to your new WordPress site. This lets us scope the project accurately and flag anything unusual before signing off on a clear plan together.

Step 2. Pre-migration setup and data mapping

Next, our team prepares both your Drupal site and your target WordPress site for the transfer. We map your Drupal products, categories, customers, and order data to their matching WooCommerce structure on your WordPress site, so your content lands in the right place with the right fields. Custom fields or unusual data structures get configured individually so nothing gets lost in the move.

Step 3. Run a demo migration

Before touching your full dataset, we run a demo migration using a sample of your Drupal content. This gives you an early look at how everything will appear in WordPress, and gives our team a chance to catch and fix any formatting or mapping issues before the full transfer runs.

Step 4. Perform the full Drupal to WordPress migration

Once you approve the demo results, we move ahead with the complete data transfer. Your Drupal site stays live and fully operational throughout the process, so you can keep running your site while the migration runs in the background.

Step 5. Migration results testing

After the full migration completes, our team runs a thorough QA review, checking products, customers, orders, and reviews for accuracy. If you’ve enabled the option, we also confirm 301 redirects are mapping your old Drupal URLs correctly, helping reduce the SEO impact of the switch.

Step 6. Post-migration tasks

Since your Drupal site keeps running during the migration, it may pick up new products, orders, or customers in the meantime. LitExtension’s post-migration services, Recent Data Migration, Smart Update, and Re-migration, each have their own scope and conditions, our team confirms exactly what applies to your project during consultation.

Step 7. Post-migration customer support

Our support doesn’t end when the migration does. For a set period after your Drupal to WordPress migration completes, our team remains available to help with any questions, fix issues you spot, or guide you through your new WordPress setup.

What to Do After Your Drupal to WordPress Migration

Getting your data onto WordPress is most of the work, but a few final steps make sure your new site is genuinely ready for visitors:

• Point your domain to WordPress: update your domain’s DNS settings to point to your new WordPress hosting. Changes can take anywhere from a few hours up to 24-48 hours to fully propagate, so plan your launch window with that in mind.
• Choose and set up a WordPress theme: WordPress offers a huge range of free and premium themes. Pick one that fits your brand, or use the migration as an opportunity to refresh your design rather than replicate the old Drupal look exactly.
• Recreate custom functionality: work through the list of Drupal modules you audited earlier and install the closest WordPress plugin equivalent for each one, or plan custom development for anything without a direct match.
• Rebuild your SEO setup: generate a new XML sitemap and submit it to Google Search Console, update your robots.txt file, and double-check that titles, meta descriptions, and alt text carried over correctly.
• Strengthen your security: install a security plugin, enable two-factor authentication, set strong passwords for every user account, and make sure your SSL certificate is active.
• Optimize performance: compress and optimize your images, set up a caching plugin, and consider a content delivery network to keep your new site loading quickly.
• Set up analytics: connect Google Analytics 4 so you can track traffic, bounce rates, and content performance from day one.
• Test thoroughly across browsers and devices: check functionality (forms, buttons, interactive elements), content accuracy, page load performance, and basic security before considering the migration fully complete.