There are numerous reasons why you might want to migrate your website to WordPress. WordPress is one of the world’s most popular content management systems, powering approximately 43% of all websites. It’s a free, user-friendly, and accessible platform that anyone can use to create a simple-to-maintain website.
Perhaps you’re ready to migrate your website from Drupal or another CMS to WordPress but are curious about the process. Most likely, you’ll work with an external developer to manage this process, but you might be curious about the steps the developer will take to migrate your site and how you can help them. In this post, we’ll go over each step of the migration process and offer advice for a smooth transition in case you were not looking into hiring a custom web development agency.
Table of Content:
Audit your website and clean your data
The first step in the migration process is to audit your current website. For a thorough audit, follow these two steps:
First step : Examine your content. Is there anything that is out of date, no longer useful, or irrelevant to your current goals? Is there any inconsistency in the way you upload your content or data? Identify any problems or extraneous content.
Second step : Remove duplicate, out-of-date, or unnecessary content. By removing unnecessary content, you can significantly shorten your migration path and avoid adding extra steps.
Back up and map your data
To ensure that you don’t lose anything during your website migration, make a backup of your website’s files. Furthermore, if your website is more complex and built on a platform such as Drupal, you should map out your data to ensure that nothing is lost during the transition. Data mapping entails transferring data from your old website to a new location in your new WordPress site. This allows you to import information from your previous content management system and ensure that it is compatible with the WordPress framework. This process can be complicated and will most likely necessitate
Your developer will map data such as: according to Kanopi’s Drupal to WordPress migration guide, your developer will map data such as:
• Details about the author
• Dates of publication
• Attachments of images and other media
• Metadata for SEO
This process enables you to easily match your website data to your new platform, ensuring consistency between your old and new sites. The end result of this process will be an XML, JSON, or CSV file containing all of your website’s content.
Managing your server
You may be debating whether to stick with your current website host or switch to a new one. Examine your options carefully in order to select the best host for your organization’s needs.
Consider the various types of WordPress hosting (managed, shared, dedicated server, VPS, and so on) and choose the best option for your company. We recommend managed hosting because it is designed specifically for WordPress. Managed hosting provides better support, faster load times, automatic backups, and more powerful features for your new WordPress site. WPEngine and Pantheon are two managed hosting providers.
Import your data
You can use a plugin like WP All Import to manage the import process. This tool can handle large files and images and supports XML, CSV, and Excel files.
Working with a WordPress developer can also make the migration go more smoothly, especially if you’re dealing with a lot of complex data. If any of your data fails to transfer correctly, these experts can implement custom code and changes.
Activate your theme, plugins, and design elements
The theme you choose for your new WordPress site can have a big impact on how your audience perceives your organisation. Depending on the image and tone you want to convey, WordPress has thousands of themes to choose from. Choose the best WordPress theme for your organisation from the theme library, or collaborate with a web designer to create a custom web design theme.
Take this opportunity to choose plugins to enhance the functionality of your site. To help speed up your site, you could install security plugins, SEO plugins, or caching plugins. Don’t go overboard with plugins because having too many poorly designed plugins can cause your site to slow down. Select your plugins with care by reading ratings and online reviews.
Clean up and test your site
In general, some manual content cleanup is required following each migration. Examine your website as if it were the first time you saw it to ensure that everything is in order.
Consider the URL structures for WordPress permalinks. Your URL structure for some content may change when you migrate to a new CMS. Redirect users from old URLs to new URLs by mapping and implementing redirects. Some plugins, such as the Redirection plugin, can help with this. This can also be done at the server level with the assistance of a developer.
Finally, check your blog content for formatting issues and your site structure to ensure that all data was transferred correctly.
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