Migrating from Joomla or Drupal to WordPress: What to Expect (2026)
Move Your Site Without Losing Content or Search Rankings
A practical guide for organizations moving an older Joomla or Drupal website to WordPress
Why organizations are leaving Joomla and Drupal
Many nonprofits, schools, and research groups built their sites on Joomla or Drupal a decade or more ago. Those platforms served them well, but older versions are now out of support:
- Drupal 7 reached end of life on January 5, 2025.
- Joomla 3 reached end of life in August 2023, and Joomla 4 on October 14, 2025.
An unsupported site no longer gets security fixes, and moving to the current version of either platform is often close to a rebuild anyway. That’s the moment many organizations choose WordPress instead: it’s easier for staff to update, it has the largest pool of developers and plugins, and it costs less to maintain over time.
What Migrates Cleanly, and What Doesn't
Knowing this up front is the best way to set a realistic budget and timeline.
- Pages, articles, and news posts
- Categories and tags
- Authors and publish dates
Expect cleanup: old formatting, inline styles, and platform-specific shortcodes rarely carry over perfectly.
- Images and PDFs
- Links inside content, once updated
A migration is a good time to remove outdated files and fix missing alt text.
- Names, emails, and roles can be imported
- Permission structures need to be remapped
Depending on how passwords were stored, users may need to reset them after launch.
- Joomla extensions and Drupal modules
- Directories, event systems, and member portals
- Custom forms and integrations
These are rebuilt with WordPress plugins or custom development, which is where most of a migration budget goes.
The Migration Process, Step by Step
How we move a Joomla or Drupal site to WordPress
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Audit your content
Inventory every page, post, file, and feature, and check analytics to see what people actually use. Most older sites have content that can be archived rather than moved, which saves time and money.
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Map content to WordPress
Decide how each Joomla category or Drupal content type becomes a WordPress post type, taxonomy, or set of custom fields. This plan drives everything that follows.
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Build the new site
Design and develop the WordPress theme on a staging server, including rebuilt features like event listings, directories, and forms.
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Migrate the content
Import content with migration tools such as FG Joomla to WordPress or FG Drupal to WordPress, supplemented by custom scripts for anything the tools can’t handle. Run it more than once on staging until the results are clean.
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Clean up content
Strip old inline styles, fix broken internal links and image paths, add missing alt text, and replace leftover platform code.
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Map URLs and set redirects
Match every old URL to its new home and set up 301 redirects. This is the single most important step for protecting your search rankings and the links other sites have pointed at you for years.
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Test everything
Check links, forms, search, accessibility, mobile layouts, and page speed. Have your staff test the editing experience before launch, too.
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Launch and monitor
Switch DNS, submit the new XML sitemap to Google Search Console, and watch for 404 errors over the following weeks so you can add any missing redirects quickly.
Protecting Your Search Rankings
The biggest fear with any migration is losing hard-earned traffic. A careful process prevents that:
- Redirect every old URL with a 301 redirect, not just the homepage.
- Carry over page titles and meta descriptions for your top-performing pages.
- Keep the content on high-traffic pages substantially the same at launch. Improve it after rankings settle.
- Submit a new sitemap and check Google Search Console for crawl errors.
- Log 404 errors with a plugin such as Redirection and fix them as they appear.
A short dip in traffic for a few weeks is normal. A well-redirected site usually recovers, and often improves on a faster, cleaner platform.
Should You Upgrade Instead of Switching?
Staying on your current platform is a real option. Drupal 11 and Joomla 5 are actively supported, and if your team knows the platform well and has developer support, upgrading can make sense.
But for sites on Drupal 7 or Joomla 3, an upgrade typically means rebuilding the theme, replacing modules or extensions, and migrating the content anyway. Since you’re paying for most of a rebuild either way, it’s worth comparing the long-term costs: ease of editing for staff, the size of the developer pool, and ongoing maintenance.
For most small and mid-sized organizations we work with, WordPress comes out ahead on all three.
How Long a Migration Takes
Timelines depend mostly on content volume and how many custom features need rebuilding:
- Small sites (under 50 pages, few custom features): about 4 to 8 weeks
- Mid-sized sites (hundreds of pages, events, forms, or a directory): about 2 to 4 months
- Large sites (thousands of pages, member areas, integrations): 4 to 6 months or more
Content migration itself is often 10% to 25% of a project budget. For full pricing ranges, see How Much Does a WordPress Website Cost in 2026? or our nonprofit website cost guide.
Frequently Asked Questions
Not if the migration is done carefully. Redirecting every old URL, keeping titles and content on key pages, and monitoring for errors after launch protects your rankings. A brief dip of a few weeks is normal.
Often, yes. WordPress permalinks are flexible enough to match many old URL patterns. Where URLs must change, 301 redirects send visitors and search engines to the new pages.
Small sites typically take 4 to 8 weeks, mid-sized sites 2 to 4 months, and large sites with custom features 4 to 6 months or more.
Drupal 7 reached end of life on January 5, 2025, and Joomla 3 in August 2023, so neither receives official security updates. Some vendors sell paid extended support, but it’s a stopgap, not a long-term plan.
No. We can recreate your current design in WordPress. Most organizations choose to refresh the design during the move, since they’re rebuilding the theme anyway.
Names, emails, and roles can usually be imported. Depending on how the old site stored passwords, users may need to reset them after launch.
Planning a Migration?
HyperArts has been moving organizations to WordPress for years, from small nonprofit sites to large research portals with thousands of pages. We handle the content audit, migration, redirects, and testing so nothing gets lost along the way.
Learn more about our WordPress design and development process, or see our Care Plans for keeping your new site secure after launch.
