ICanLocalize used to offer translation for Drupal sites, but we had to discontinue it due to the cost of maintaining our Translation Management Module for Drupal. Turns out that there’s a shift from Drupal to WordPress. We’re glad to offer a guide for anyone interested in moving from Drupal to WordPress.
Why are developers migrating from Drupal to WordPress?
Bottom line, it’s financial. For many sites, it’s less expensive to rebuild on WordPress than to maintain on Drupal. Of course, Drupal is an excellent CMS. Drupal has set the standard for many of the features that WordPress has today. Some developers are looking to migrate from Drupal to WordPress not because Drupal is bad, but because they can achieve the same in WordPress, for a fraction of the cost.
A different philosophy about NIH
NIH stands for Not Invented Here.
Many WordPress sites rely on a list of plugins, to put together the functionality that the developer needs. In Drupal, developers use fewer modules and either build major functionality themselves or get it from Drupal core.
When you build a site with dozens of plugins/modules, you have to pay close attention to the plugins that you choose and how reliable they are.
When you write a lot of code yourself, you need to keep maintaining it over time.
Both approaches work. Both have benefits and problems.
A different philosophy about major updates
WordPress updates are always backward compatible. When you update WordPress on a site that you’ve built, you expect it to continue working. There are always some exceptions, but this is the general rule.
Major updates of Drupal are never backward compatible. Developers always have to undergo a complex process for migrating websites between major Drupal versions. This sounds scary, but it’s not all bad. Allowing to do breaking changes means that the platform can take big leaps and show impressive advancements. However, it means that maintaining Drupal sites over time can be very expensive.
Is WordPress for me?
Again, this depends on what you need. If you’re developing with Drupal today, we recommend that you check out the migration guide. See how you’ll build your sites with WordPress and decide if it’s good or not for you.
How much trouble is it to migrate to WordPress?
Fortunately, not as much as it appears. Since there’s an equivalent for almost everything in Drupal, it means that you don’t have to redo the entire architecture. You’ll need to rebuild the site, but you can transfer the content in full.
For many developers, moving from Drupal 7 to WordPress was less expensive than to Drupal 8.