Businesses using content-heavy websites would be familiar with Drupal, which is also one of the most sought-after open source development services in the Middle East. Drupal is a free, secure content management system (CMS) which is commonly preferred as the best alternative to conventional systems. However, shifting from the CMS in use to Drupal can be quite challenging. 

Drupal has a great developer network presenting many talents with reliable open source CMS development capabilities. Before choosing Drupal for CMS or migrating to Drupal, there many things that need to be taken into account. Here are a few handy tips to keep the migration costs and the risks of migration down.

Prepare a migration plan

Almost every organization’s migration agenda would factor in the cost. Migrating to a different CMS has its fair share of challenges. However the cost of migration would largely depend on the kind of process undertaken for the migration. This is why making a plan is important. 

The plan should address many questions and concern, including:

• Is migration necessary? If yes, why?
  
• Timeline for migration
  
• Company personnel in charge of migration
  
• Migration investments and will they be justified
  
• How soon to expect the ROI on the migration
  
• Challenges in migration
  

The answers to these questions can also help the Drupal expert that a company hires to perform the migration.

Site auditing from an organizational standpoint

Before hiring an open source development company in Dubai to perform migration to Drupal, you will have to document facts on the company’s organizational persona so the developer will understand how the business works, and what they expect from the migration. 

For this, a site audit can be helpful. The report should include:

• The assets that make up the source site
  
• The parts of the source site that should be migrated
  
• Whether enhancements are required during migration
  
• Whether integration with legacy systems is required
  
• How the migration impacts the organization’s workflow
  

Site auditing from a technical standpoint

The key areas to include in the site audit report from a technical perspective are:

• Details on the repository used by source site for storing data
  
• How the source site structures non-content data
  
• Tools used by competitors for their migration
  
• Best practices for sustained data accessibility and minimal downtime
  
• Time commitment (in hours or days) for in-house IT and marketing team to work with the migration team
  
• Whether there is scope for a CRM integration and if it’s necessary to achieve business goals
  

Keeping the budget intact during migration

To keep the budget intact,

• Ensure that modules in use are updated properly and available so you can add them to your Drupal installation before migration. If they are unavailable, you may to have disable them from the source site temporarily, and have them redesigned (additional costs).
  
• Consider the fact that it is not possible to skip a Drupal version while migrating. You cannot go straight to Drupal 7 from Drupal 5. You will have to update to Drupal 6 first. 
  
• Make sure to get answers from every migration-related query from the open source software development company who performs the migration.