In the spring, I was approached by a client to tackle a Drupal 5 to WordPress 3 migration. I had never done this before, but I was willing to take on the challenge — and boy, was it a challenge!
I’m not a database expert, so my first step was to do a search for some type of script that would assist me in this daunting task. I found several helpful resources, but they were all just a little off (they were for earlier versions of WordPress). To solve this issue, I just installed an earlier version of WordPress, made the migration and then updated WordPress.
It wasn’t really that simple and straightforward though, I had to make quite a few changes to the scripts (with the help of my husband), and after many passes and many hours of looking at the two databases, I was able to move the Drupal content into WordPress.
Even after moving everything over, there were still a lot of things missing or misplaced. I had to massage some of the items in the WordPress database to fit properly. The client was using an events module in Drupal, and that didn’t transfer over at all. In the end, the client had to move the events over manually.
This was not an easy project, but given the chance, I would probably do it again. Here is the new website using WordPress, which the client loves, by the way!
