How to migrate from Drupal to WordPress in 9 steps?
This tutorial describes the steps to migrate a Drupal web site to WordPress.
1. Install WordPress
During the migration from Drupal to WordPress, the Drupal site must stay online and you must install a WordPress site in parallel. It can be installed in a first step in a subdirectory of the Drupal site or on a development server or on your localhost. You can download WordPress on https://wordpress.org/.
2. Install the FG Drupal to WordPress plugin
To migrate from Drupal to WordPress, you need the plugin FG Drupal to WordPress. The easiest way to install it is from the plugin section of your WordPress site. Add new, search Drupal, find FG Drupal to WordPress, click Install and activate the plugin.
The free version migrates the articles, the pages, the images, the categories and the tags. If you want to migrate the authors, the comments or other custom post types, or want to keep your site’s SEO, you need the Premium version.
3. Configure FG Drupal to WordPress
Once the plugin is activated, you must go to the plugin screen through the menu Tools > Import > Drupal.
Fill in the URL field with the URL of the live Drupal site. This field is used to get the images and transfer them to the WordPress media library.
Fill in the Drupal database parameters (hostname, port, database, username, password, Drupal table prefix). You can find these values in the Drupal file sites/default/settings.php.
If 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. In this case, you must use the WordPress credentials instead of the Drupal ones in the database parameters. The WordPress database parameters can be found in the wp-config.php file.
The other parameters should be OK by default, but you can change them if you need.
4. Test the database connection
Testing the database connection is an important step. It tells you if the WordPress site can connect to the Drupal database. It also tells you how much data contains the Drupal site.
5. Run the import
Just click on the button «Start / Resume the import» to start the transfer. This step can be long depending on the number of articles and images you have got in Drupal.
Note: If the import process hangs due to a timeout on your server or due to a memory full, you can stop and resume it. It will resume the import where it left off.
Once the import is complete, you should see a report telling how much data has been migrated and converted to WordPress and this message: IMPORT COMPLETE
6. Modify the internal links
Once the import is finished with all the data migrated, you need to modify the internal links that are included in the posts content. You can do it with the button «Modify internal links».
7. Test the WordPress site
The next step is to test that all data have been well transferred: articles, categories, tags, images. You can eventually recategorize the posts and add tags.
8. Install a WordPress theme
The FG Drupal to WordPress plugin will only move the content from Drupal to WordPress. It will not move the design. For that, you need to get a WordPress theme. You can find plenty of beautiful and responsive themes on the Internet. Some are free, others are paid.
Once you have chosen a theme that matches your site, you need to configure it: add a banner, add a logo, build the front page. The procedure is different from a theme to another one.
9. Move to production
If some new articles have been written on Drupal after the migration but before you move the WordPress site to production, you can import the latest articles by just clicking again on the import button. It will just import the new articles, and will not import the data that has already been imported.
Once the WordPress site is ready, it is time to move it to the right location in replacement of the Drupal site.
For that, you need a FTP software like Filezilla.
Create a subdirectory, name it Drupal
Move the Drupal files to the Drupal directory
Move the WordPress files to the root of your server.
Modify the .htaccess file with the new path.
You also need to change the absolute paths in the WordPress database. You can do it by exporting the WordPress database to a SQL file using phpMyAdmin, do a search/replace of the paths and import back the SQL file. Or easier, you can use the plugin Better Search Replace to do this change directly in the database.
Go to the FG Drupal to WordPress page.
