Posted by abloodworth on March 30, 2017 at 4:16am
Our non-profit horse association has a Drupal 5.0 website that has a couple of bugs. It needs to be upgraded to Drupal 8.0 or at least 7.0, but the bugs (and perhaps just standard upgrade complications) have prevented me from being able to do this. Does anyone we could hire to help still know Drupal 5.0, or should we just start over? The new person managing the website wants to use Wordpress, so unless I can find a cost-effective way to upgrade it, that is what they will do.
Thanks for any ideas!
Allison
abloodworth@gmail.com
Comments
What would you expect as cost effective
Hey Allison
In your case what would you expect as cost effective solution?
Janis
janis.janovskis@gmail.com
Upgrading can certainly be
Upgrading can certainly be costly, especially coming from 5 to 7 or 8. Whether it's worth it will depend on your budget and the amount of content you're looking to migrate.
For smaller non-profits, or websites that don't have a ton of content, a lot of the time it's not really worth it to try to migrate the data and is faster to just start over, especially since a redesign will likely introduce new elements into the page that will have to be manually added anyways.
Been there, done that, and don't recommend it!
I have to agree with jmickela on this! I've migrated a Drupal 5 site to Drupal 6 and, while I can image it being slightly easier these days migrating to Drupal 7, unless your site is massive, I'd say let the new developer create the site entirely in Wordpress and then have people copy/paste the Drupal 5 data in manually. Spend money on "cheap" data-entry vs. expensive Drupal migration/caveat know-how!
It all depends on the site requirements
It all depends on the site requirements.
For some things, WordPress is great and low-cost. But if the project doesn't fit within what WordPress is designed to do, you should choose a tool that's better-suited for the job. That may be Drupal, but it may not be.
Before deciding on the platform, have an experienced person take a hard look at the requirements (i.e., the specifics of what you want your new site to do).
Migrating from D5; needs assessment
I'd say it really depends on your data and needs assessment.
Migrate module in D8 can be pretty amazing for basic things-- point at a database and import. If you have complex relationships, they can be difficult to transfer through either database scripting or manual methods, but for any site bigger than 100 nodes or so, someone who can write queries is probably cheaper considering value of time (keep in mind, you've got to manage any manual migration).
I'm generally pretty relatively hostile to WorkPress: while it may fit some organizational goals, especially in the short-term, it lacks the architectural sophistication (do you need roles? real roles, with real data security?) of Drupal, and the heavy insistence on professional standards that have been such a reason for D8's rapidly increased corporate adoption.
The BYU study of their transition to Drupal in 2004 may remain relevant: long-term costs of maintaining sites seem to have gone down for them, and adopting Drupal seemed to free personnel resources for them.
Performance and mobility along between D5 and D8, are quite major and significant factors to be considered, if your end-user experience, usability and actual usage are organizationally important.
For any site whose function is more than trivial, I'd strongly recommend a sober process of needs assessment prior to making such a decision, including both assessment of current site scope and functions, use and usability; and proactive discussion of what one wants the site to be and do for your organization in the futures, which sets out communications goals and strategies.
On that note, having just stepped out of lecture over here at the University of Chicago today, I'll quickly mention a relevant project: http://vitaltalk.org/. It seems to me the data-based approach to using communications and rhetorical techniques, to foster both better conversations and better results, is a relevant reminder of what we really do when we produce websites.
(Apologies for the cross-post with the above).
~kwt