Drupal 7 Migration Readiness Checklist

Drupal 7 has reached its end of life, which means no further support, security updates, or bug fixes. If new security flaws are discovered in your Drupal 7 instance, they won't be fixed, or if bugs start appearing, there won't be an active community working to resolve them. This builds huge technical debt for any organization. And technicalities aside, organizations must always meet compliance standards, data protection, and accessibility regulations.

It's now recommended to migrate to the most recent Drupal version (Drupal 10+) to mitigate risk, minimize technical debt, and cost accumulation.

This article provides a Drupal 7 migration readiness checklist that you can adopt. It breaks down the steps, considerations, and general practices to help achieve a smooth migration. Migration generally isn't the smoothest ride, so organizations must evaluate their readiness.

Migration isn't an update; it's a process of rebuilding, a different core architecture, theme engine, and contributed modules. Migration is also not a replication, but a chance to relearn and evolve.

Drupal 7 Migration Readiness Checklist

1. Audit Your Existing Drupal

• Evaluate content inventory: Decide what content should be migrated, archived, or restructured.
• Evaluate module inventory: Identify which contributed modules are still needed, and whether they have been ported to Drupal 10+.
• Evaluate theme: Determine if it’s time for a UX refresh, a redesign, or a facelift.
• Evaluate integrations: Review existing third-party integrations (CRM, ERP, eCommerce)

Drupal Audit? We Can Surely Help

2. Address Business & User Goals

• Define top priorities:  Focus on security, performance, scalability, integration, workflow, or editorial experience?
• Consider user expectations: Does your audience expect new functionalities, multilingual support, or accessibility upgrades?
• Define AI Strategy: Do you plan to integrate AI in your Drupal, and to what extent? Do you want to rely on AI providers or leverage open LLMs?
• Align Digital Transformation roadmap: How does migration fit in the broader strategy?

3. Plan Content Strategy

• Clean up content: Audit your content for duplicates and outdated content, and ensure high-quality content is migrated with integrity.
• Improve taxonomy: Restructure content to enhance navigation, searchability, and UX.
• Ensure SEO and accessibility compliance: Align content with SEO and accessibility best practices.

4. Module-Functionality Matrix

Drupal 10+ offers a different module ecosystem; some Drupal 7 modules might not have been upgraded.

• Map essential features to Drupal 10 modules: Identify existing functionality and align it with supported Drupal 10+ modules.
• Plan custom development: Allocate resources to rebuild or extend features.
• Replace deprecated functionality: Find modern alternatives to deprecated features.

4. Prepare Team & Infrastructure

• Validate expertise: Is the team proficient with Symfony, Twig, Composer, and Drupal 10 architecture?
• Review hosting: Is the environment ready for PHP 8+? Is it optimized for modern caching? Are CI/CD pipelines properly configured?
• Prepare onboarding: Have content editors and website admins been trained to use the new Drupal admin experience?

5. Migration Roadmap

Break your process into phases as you see fit. We generally break the migration roadmap into the following phases:

Planning your migration thoroughly helps minimize risk. A Drupal 7 to 11 migration process often takes 6-12+ months.

Use migration as an opportunity to evolve, modernize, and to realign goals and priorities. A clear readiness checklist ensures that the migration process is approached strategically to prioritize security and data integrity while keeping downtime to a minimum.