Back in the day, Drupal was my jam. During the aughts, I attended and volunteered at Drupal conferences, participated in its online community, and I rattled on at parties about its virtues (because I’m fun like that).
My enthusiasm for Drupal wasn’t just about being a part of a vibrant community; it was also rooted in the belief that it offered unparalleled flexibility and customization options for our clients’ diverse needs.
Back then, Drupal was the solution for a small organization wanting a dynamic, custom website they could edit themselves. At that time, WordPress was merely a blogging platform with burgeoning capabilities, but it didn’t yet provide the wide-ranging functionality of Drupal. While WordPress was gaining traction for its ease of use and growing ecosystem, it lacked the robustness and scalability that Drupal boasted. It was a time when choosing between Drupal and WordPress meant deciding between complexity with power or simplicity with limitations.
Then, in 2015, as WordPress’ abilities were on an upswing, Drupal made a shift and released a new version. This version was a significant departure from the previous one. As this new version matured, it became more of an enterprise website platform rather than an ideal solution for small organizations. The complexity of managing and customizing Drupal sites escalated. It became time-consuming (read: expensive) to maintain, and as the back-end became more complicated, the initial appeal for small organizations and their web developers began to fade.
A shift to WordPress
And that is the short story of how I morphed from a Drupal evangelist to using WordPress almost exclusively for client websites. This transition wasn’t just about following the market trend or opting for an easier path. It was a response to the evolving needs of our clients and the changing landscape of web development.
WordPress, with its extensive plugin ecosystem, user-friendly interface, and increasingly flexible framework, began to offer a new kind of promise: the ability to create dynamic, customizable websites without the overhead of complexity and cost that Drupal had come to embody. This shift wasn’t about abandoning my roots; it was about adapting to ensure that the solutions I provided continued to serve my clients’ needs in the best way possible.
Drupal 7’s end-of-life and migrating to WordPress
In January 2025, Drupal’s version 7 will have reached its end of life. This means the platform will no longer be supported with security updates, leaving sites running Drupal 7 vulnerable to hackers.
In anticipation of the deadline, Alpen Lily has performed countless Drupal-to-WordPress migrations over the past few years. Our unique blend of deep experience with both Drupal and WordPress makes us an ideal candidate for these migrations.
Translating Drupal to WordPress
One of the most significant challenges in migrating from Drupal to WordPress is managing the complexity of Drupal’s modules and Views and translating them into WordPress plugins or custom functionality. Our extensive experience with both platforms allows us to navigate these complexities adeptly. And through our experience migrating these sites, we’ve learned when it’s appropriate to migrate content via a feed or manually from Drupal to WordPress.
Alpen Lily has performed countless Drupal-to-WordPress migrations. We have fine-tuned our migration process to be an efficient one (read: less expensive for clients), based on years of experience in the Drupal and WordPress ecosystems.
Future-proofing WordPress websites
Beyond the technical execution of migrations, Alpen Lilly offers strategic vision for redesigning and future-proofing websites post-migration. The transition to WordPress opens up opportunities for redesigns that enhance user experience, improve SEO, and leverage the latest web technologies.
As Drupal 7 comes closer to its end-of-life in January 2025, I can’t help but think about my journey from fervent Drupal advocate to a seasoned WordPress developer. After 17 years as a web developer, things were bound to change. And in the next 17, they will no-doubt continue to shift with the advent of AI. Fortunately, these days, this provides more than enough material for social gatherings.
Alpen Lily Web Studio Founder Renée Deinken and her team have been building award-winning websites for more than 15 years. Her approach to website development is content-focused, detail-oriented, and efficient, all while making the project process easy for clients. Renée truly enjoys interacting with Alpen Lily’s clients, which include engaging folks from a vast array of organizations, including nonprofits, marketing firms, ski resorts, special districts, and businesses of all sizes. Get in touch with Renée.