October 6, 2026 · By Drupal Company
Moving from WordPress to Drupal is mostly a data-mapping exercise. This checklist covers the parts that go wrong most often.
Before you start
- Export a full list of URLs, including images and attachments, from the live site and sitemap.
- Decide which content to keep. A migration is the best moment to drop old posts nobody reads.
- Map WordPress post types and custom fields to Drupal content types and fields.
Mapping
- Posts, pages and custom post types become content types.
- Categories and tags become taxonomy vocabularies.
- Media becomes Drupal media entities with files in the right place.
- Authors and roles map to Drupal users and roles. Do not migrate password hashes you cannot verify; plan a password reset.
- Shortcodes and page-builder markup rarely survive. Plan how to convert or rewrite them.
Doing the migration
Write migrations with the Migrate API so they can be re-run. Test on a copy, compare counts, and spot-check content including images and internal links.
SEO
Keep URL paths where possible, set up 301 redirects for anything that changes, carry over titles and meta descriptions, and regenerate the XML sitemap. Check Search Console after launch.
Launch day
Freeze content on the old site, run a final delta migration, switch DNS, and keep the old site available privately for a few weeks for reference.
WordPress Migration SEO