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Maria Cuan
4,500 PointsLarge amounts of content
Hello everyone, I have a question that I have not been able to answer anywhere. I have a medical (cancer) website, and my client wants to transfer all of their pages and subpages to their new site (in wordpress). The problem is that it is not simple copy and paste, its like transferring an encyclopedia. Is there a way to do this without having to create a trillion pages in the word press structure? are there any solutions for transferring a lot of content from one old website (which is not wordpress) to a new one? Any answers are greatly appreciated. Thank you community!
8 Answers
Kevin Korte
28,149 PointsI don't think without access to the site's back end, that what you want to do is possible without a bunch of copy and pasting. That website is drupal. Drupal, much like Wordpress, stores content in a database. Of course, database structures would be different between Druapal and Wordpress.
My thought was if you could get your hands on the exported SQL file from the Drupal database, you could/should be able to import that data, in some way, into a fresh WP database.
Truth be told, I've never done this, so I'm a bit in uncharted water here. Take a look at this http://codex.wordpress.org/Importing_Content down in the drupal section and see if one of those links do not at least give you a direction to go towards.
My last question, purely out of curiosity, is what the reason is they want to move a mature site from drupal to wordpress?
Sharon Walls
9,234 PointsThe WordPress database has certain naming conventions for its tables and columns. You can view this structure by exporting a default install of WordPress.
The next step is to export your content from Drupal. (I've never used Drupal so I'm not helpful there. Sorry.)
Then you need to clean up the data so that it is compatible with the WordPress naming conventions. Depending on how many custom fields they were using in Drupal, this could be easy or difficult; basically, you need to get the title, content, dates, authors, etc. into the correct columns.
I've used the WP CSV plugin on similar projects and it's pretty robust. With a CSV, you can also view the data without having any knowledge of SQL.
Kevin Korte
28,149 PointsHow is the old site structured? Does it have a database? Is there a backend, server-side language?
Maria Cuan
4,500 PointsSadly we do not have access to the other website. (As in access to their host, etc) I believe they are using drupal.
http://tahoecancercenter.com/types-of-cancer/bladder-cancer/radiation-therapy-for-bladder-cancer
Do you think it is important for us to be able to access that in order to transfer the content?
Maria Cuan
4,500 PointsBasically, I work for a PR agency. I just got here, and I am looking at some of their clients. They wanted to re-design their site. The new site was designed in wordpress, while the old one was in drupal. The reasons are probably because the designers here did not have any experience in drupal. I think you are right, the easiest way will be to design a site for drupal because their content is already there.
Kevin Korte
28,149 PointsI see, that is fair enough. I'm always a fan of building in what you are comfortable with. The SQL database is going to be the fastest way to transfer content. It's still going to be a project to get the data out of the Drupal and into the Wordpress and make everyone (or everything) happy. I'm afraid you could spend as much time figuring out how to do this as it would take to reskin the current Drupal site.
I've messed around slightly with Drupal. The same core concepts as Wordpress are there, it's just less blog like - more blank CMS, and of course Drupal has it's own culture, and way of doing things. I've heard the learning curve is a bit more steep on Drupal than Wordpress, but it could be a great opportunity to dive and learn Drupal if the project has the timeline for it.
Maria Cuan
4,500 PointsThank you for your support and help Kevin!
Kevin Korte
28,149 PointsAbsolutely. Maybe someone with more experience can offer better insight, but that's what I know. :)