Migrate from Drupal 7 to Drupal 10: Step-by-Step Guide

Drupal 7 no longer receives security updates. Your site is vulnerable to attacks, and there is no direct upgrade path to Drupal 10 — only a full migration. We have completed 20+ such projects, ranging from 50 to 200,000 nodes. Our experience helps avoid common pitfalls and keep downtime to a minimum.

Migrate API speeds up content transfer by 3–5 times compared to manual export. But migration isn't just about content: custom modules and themes must be completely rewritten. Drupal 7 is procedural and lacks Composer; Drupal 10 is object-oriented on Symfony with YAML-based routing. The architectural differences force a full code refactor.

Migration from Drupal 7 to Drupal 10: Step-by-Step Instructions

Architectural Differences: Why This Is Not an Upgrade

Drupal 7 and Drupal 10 are architecturally different systems. D7 does not use Composer, OOP, or Symfony components. Content is migrated via Migrate API, while theme and module code is rewritten entirely. This is a full refactoring, not an update. For example, hook_menu in D7 becomes YAML routes, and procedural functions become services using Dependency Injection.

Migration Strategies: How to Choose

Migrate API is the recommended option. It allows running migrations multiple times, adding only changed content. The difference in effort between Migrate API and manual migration is 3–5 times in favor of automation. Using Migrate API can reduce budget by 60-80%.

How to Migrate Custom Modules?

Custom Drupal 7 modules must be completely rewritten for Drupal 10. For example, hook_menu is replaced by a YAML file mymodule.routing.yml, and procedural functions become classes with annotations. The complexity of rewriting depends on the module size. Often, the entire business logic needs refactoring. Request a site audit to assess the effort.

How We Conduct Migration: Step-by-Step

First, we perform a full audit of the current site. We access the D7 server and collect metrics: list of active modules, node types, DB size. Then we spin up a new server with Drupal 10 and install migration packages.

composer create-project drupal/recommended-project drupal10-site
cd drupal10-site
composer require drupal/migrate_plus drupal/migrate_tools drupal/migrate_upgrade drupal/migrate_source_csv
drush en migrate migrate_plus migrate_tools migrate_upgrade -y

Connect the D7 database as an additional database in settings.php:

$databases['migrate']['default'] = [
    'driver'   => 'mysql',
    'database' => 'drupal7_db',
    'username' => 'db_user',
    'password' => 'db_pass',
    'host'     => '127.0.0.1',
    'port'     => '3306',
    'prefix'   => '',
];

The command drush migrate:upgrade generates YAML configurations for users, taxonomy, content types, fields, nodes, files, blocks, and menus. Then migrations are run in dependency order: first roles, then content types, fields, taxonomy, users, files, nodes, menus, and blocks.

drush migrate:import upgrade_d7_user_role
drush migrate:import upgrade_d7_node_type
drush migrate:import upgrade_d7_field
drush migrate:import upgrade_d7_field_instance
drush migrate:import upgrade_d7_taxonomy_vocabulary
drush migrate:import upgrade_d7_taxonomy_term
drush migrate:import upgrade_d7_user
drush migrate:import upgrade_d7_file
drush migrate:import upgrade_d7_node_complete
drush migrate:import upgrade_d7_menu
drush migrate:import upgrade_d7_block

Problem Areas and Their Solutions

• CCK/Field API: Field Collection in D7 is not migrated directly — the migrate_field_collection module is required.
• Views: Views 3 (D7) are partially transferred. Complex views with relationships must be recreated manually.
• Media files: Files are copied via the file_copy plugin, with the source path specified in source_base_path.

Contact us for a consultation — we will assess the complexity of your project and propose an optimal plan.

How to Minimize Downtime?

We use delta migration. A few days before the cutover, we run the initial full migration. On cutover day, we first put D7 into maintenance mode, then run incremental updates: drush migrate:import --all --update. After that, we switch DNS to D10 and disable maintenance mode. Full downtime is 15-30 minutes. Contact us to evaluate your project.

What’s Included in the Work?

• Full audit of the current D7 site (modules, themes, content, DB)
• Content migration via Migrate API with integrity guarantee
• Rewriting custom modules and themes to OOP/Symfony
• Configuration of SEO modules (metatag, redirect, pathauto)
• Test migration and acceptance testing
• Documentation of the new architecture, server and admin access
• Two weeks of post-migration support

Request a D7 site audit to get precise timelines and cost.

Timelines and Cost

Cost is determined individually after an audit. Contact us to discuss the details.

Website Redesign and Migration: CMS Change, SEO Preservation

A client came to us 6 weeks after a self-attempted redesign: 'We moved from WordPress to Tilda, traffic dropped by 70%.' I opened Google Search Console — 847 pages returned 404, the URL structure had completely changed, not a single 301 redirect was in place. Yandex hadn't reindexed the new site yet, positions collapsed. Recovery took 4 months and resulted in significant revenue loss for the quarter. Our experience — over 7 years and 80+ successful migrations, we guarantee position retention with the right approach.

Why Do Migrations Break SEO?

Search engines have indexed specific URLs. If /catalog/shoes/nike-air-max-270 turned into /products/nike-air-max-270 without a 301 redirect — all the link equity, traffic, and rankings go nowhere. Google says 301 passes ~99% of PageRank, but in practice positions recover over 2–8 weeks, not instantly.

Commonly, SEO gets broken not out of malice, but because a developer doesn't view the URL structure as a public API. Here are typical breakages:

How to Recover Traffic After a Failed Migration?

If traffic dropped, act immediately:

1. Crawl the new site for 404s and compare with the pre-migration URL list.
2. Create redirects for all lost pages with traffic >0.
3. Check structured data and meta tags on a test sample.
4. Daily monitor Coverage in Search Console and positions for top 50 queries.
5. If after 2 weeks traffic does not recover — deep audit of redirects (transitivity, chains, loops).

In our practice, a large e-commerce site lost 50% of traffic when moving from Bitrix to React + Strapi. We restored 95% of redirects in three days, and within 3 weeks traffic returned to 90% of original.

What Does a Pre-Migration Audit Include?

Before starting development on the new site:

1. Full crawl of current site via Screaming Frog or Sitebulb. Get list of all indexable URLs with traffic from Google Search Console.
2. Export all pages with organic traffic >0 over the last 6 months — these are priority for redirects.
3. Record all external backlinks to specific pages — Ahrefs, Semrush.
4. Snapshot current positions for key queries — baseline for post-migration comparison.
5. Save Core Web Vitals from Search Console for the previous 90 days.

Table for recording:

Contact us for a detailed pre-migration audit — we will help identify all risks and create an action plan.

URL Mapping and Redirects

For projects with 200+ pages, we create a mapping table: old URL → new URL → status (301, merged with another page, deleted). Each row is verified: does the content actually migrate here?

In Laravel, redirects are handled via configuration file and middleware, not .htaccess — faster and more manageable. For WordPress → Next.js: redirects are set in next.config.js (static) and at the Nginx/CDN level for dynamic ones. Old .htaccess on shared hosting with 500+ lines of redirects is a special hell. Each redirect is checked sequentially, performance suffers. We move to Nginx map directive or Redis cache for dynamic lookup. More at Wikipedia: HTTP 301.

How to Migrate Content from Different CMSs?

WordPress → Headless CMS (Contentful, Strapi, Sanity): WordPress REST API or WP All Export to export posts, meta fields, media files. Migration script in Node.js: parse export, transform structure, upload via CMS API. Media files are reuploaded to new storage, links updated in content. Typical problem — shortcodes in WordPress content ([gallery id="123"]): need parser and transformation to new format.

1C-Bitrix → modern stack: Bitrix stores content in non-standard tables with IBLOCK_ELEMENT_PROPERTY. Direct SQL export via phpMyAdmin or Bitrix API. Transformation is the longest part due to specific Bitrix data structure.

Heavy WYSIWYG → structured content: Years of editing in FCKEditor/TinyMCE leave inline styles, non-standard tags, broken attributes. HTML sanitize + transformation to Markdown or Portable Text (Sanity) with manual check of problematic pages.

How to Preserve Technical SEO Elements During Migration?

Structured data (Schema.org) — if the old site had Product, Article, BreadcrumbList markup, they must be on the new site too. Google Search Console → Enhancement reports will show loss of rich snippets.

Sitemap XML: generated automatically, submitted to GSC a day after launch. Old sitemap remains until full reindexing.

hreflang for multilingual sites: if tags are lost during migration, conflicts between language versions in search results will start within weeks.

Open Graph and Twitter Card meta tags — often forgotten when changing template, pages stop displaying correctly when shared on social networks.

Launch and First Weeks Monitoring

DNS propagation: DNS switching takes up to 48 hours, plan launch with buffer. Cloudflare as DNS provider — propagation takes minutes, not hours.

After launch, monitor daily: Search Console → Coverage (indexing errors), Analytics → organic traffic, year-over-year comparison, crawl site for 404 errors.

First 2 weeks are critical. If traffic drops more than 30% — immediate audit of redirects and comparison with pre-migration crawl.

What the Service Includes

Results you receive:

1. Migration plan with URL mapping and redirects in Excel/Google Sheets format.
2. Configured 301 redirects at server level (Nginx/Cloudflare/Vercel).
3. Migrated content with integrity check: images, meta fields, links.
4. Structured data (Schema.org) on the new site, identical to old or improved.
5. SEO report: position trend at 1, 3, and 6 weeks after launch.
6. Coverage monitoring in Search Console with error notifications.
7. Guaranteed position retention: if traffic drops more than 15% within the first month — free audit and correction.

Timelines and Estimates

• Redesign with migration for a small site (up to 100 pages): 4–8 weeks.
• E-commerce migration with 500+ product pages: 8–16 weeks.
• Only technical migration part (redirects, metadata) without redesign: 1–3 weeks.

Cost is calculated individually based on scope.

Get a consultation for your project — we will respond within a day. Order a pre-migration audit of your site and receive a detailed proposal with a redirect plan. Contact us to discuss details.