Author Topic: Taking Baby Steps with CiviCRM: Can I migrate from Wordpress to Drupal? (Read 1313 times)

polkaroo · December 04, 2012, 11:15:10 pm

Hi,

I am working with a small nonprofit organization, looking to set them up with CiviCRM. I was thinking about starting them off with a Wordpress installation, but I would like to have the flexibility to move to Drupal if the organization grows and needs a CMS with more features. Is this possible? I see posts where people move from Drupal to Wordpress or Joomla, but not the other way around.

Erik Hommel · December 04, 2012, 11:30:25 pm

From a CiviCRM point of view this should be possible. The issues would probably be more with the website content and set up? It is certainly not a route I would recommend, I would start with Drupal straightaway.

xavier · December 05, 2012, 01:26:10 am

Hi,

The main problem you're going to have:
1) the urls are going to be different. Might be a problem if you have a lot of civi stuff (events/newsletters/contribution pages...) that is available to everyone
2) the user accounts will need to be recreated (because a drupal account isn't the same as a WP account) AND you will need to make the link again between the user and the contact is civi (user 1 is linked with contact record 42, user 2 with...)

This is the problem for any migration, no matter if from or to drupal/wordpress/joomla

If it's only the staff that has accounts and civi is mostly used as a non visible backoffice tool, shouldn't be too painful. If you have your members that are registering to event or donate or become members and modify their contact details online, that will be more complicated

What would be your benefit of starting with WP if you think you'll end up in drupal?

X+

davem · December 10, 2012, 06:45:59 am

There seem to be 2 issues: migrating your Civi and migrating the CMS. Technically neither is a big problem and we've migrated people from both J! and WP to Drupal. People who are working on the Civi will be fine as the interface there will be largely the same. However, CMS users will experience more disruption. Drupal has different menus, different ways of doing things and really presents you with a different way of thinking about content. So there will potentially be major retraining issues.

If they already have a WP site which they're happy with then you could either stick with that expanding the WP with plugins to do what they'll need over time or look into whether it would make sense to run the Civi on a separate Drupal that end users only see when they go to e.g. register for an event and end up on crm.domain.org/civicrm/event/info?reset=1&id=123 We take this approach with people who already have a substantial investment in an existing site but want to have the self serve membership/event/donation/etc stuff that Civi provides.

If they don't already have a WP site and you don't think it is a good long term platform for them, then you should probably start with something that will grow with them and give them a Drupal and spend some time to make the UI really easy for them so you get good buy in to one platform from day one.

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Author Topic: Taking Baby Steps with CiviCRM: Can I migrate from Wordpress to Drupal? (Read 1313 times)

polkaroo

Taking Baby Steps with CiviCRM: Can I migrate from Wordpress to Drupal?

Erik Hommel

Re: Taking Baby Steps with CiviCRM: Can I migrate from Wordpress to Drupal?

xavier

Re: Taking Baby Steps with CiviCRM: Can I migrate from Wordpress to Drupal?

davem

Re: Taking Baby Steps with CiviCRM: Can I migrate from Wordpress to Drupal?