What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you think about a higher education website? Is it the course structure, fee structure, faculty details, student information or something else? The list is endless. Owing to growing demands and evolving educational landscape, institutions need a more flexible, scalable, secure, and powerful CMS solution, based on the website requirements.

This blog explains how Drupal can help elevate your higher ed website and also explores some challenges that you may face in your Drupal migration journey. Additionally, learn how Altudo can help you through the migration process and allow you to focus on overall growth, leaving the rest to the experts.

Why migrate from WordPress to Drupal?

Drupal is one of the most demanded CMS platforms amongst many top/renowned universities across the globe. About 71% of top universities and ivy league institutions have chosen Drupal as their CMS platform. It offers a wide variety of compelling features and flexibility that helps you enhance your website performance. The best-in-class digital experience helps you get higher engagement, enrollment and retain students, staff, and alumni.

To give you an insightful and detailed explanation of WordPress Drupal migration can be beneficial, here’re the five crucial benefits:

1. Scalability and flexibility: Drupal is known for its flexibility and scalability, making it suitable for handling complex websites with intricate features. The multi-web functionality of Drupal allows institutions to have complete control of content across the website including updating course structures, managing changes in student curriculum and much more.

It allows you to centrally manage your website and scale as and when needed. The scalable architecture allows seamless growth and integration of new modules and features, ensuring your website can handle traffic fluctuations and large data volumes.

2. Ease of customization: Drupal offers greater customization capabilities to higher ed websites like managing educational content for e-learning, creating individual student profiles, creating special themes based on different users like students, staff, or parents. Drupal offers the ease of customization without requiring custom code.

It allows institutions the independence to manage content and design unique and personalized user experiences. From custom templates to tailored content presentations, Drupal empowers institutions to cater to their specific audience needs.

3. Higher security: Higher ed institutions are dealing with sensitive student data as well as course curriculums that must have all-round security. Drupal has a strong focus on security, and it regularly releases security updates to address vulnerabilities promptly. Its robust security features and mechanism can help your education website with stronger security.

Drupal has a global security team that works 24*7 to ensure that Drupal websites remain secure despite being hosted on an open-source platform.

4. Accessibility compliance: Drupal is committed to promoting accessibility compliance for education websites by prioritizing an "Accessibility-First" approach. It promotes accessibility through its core features, and not just by adding a single plugin or module. It helps your education website achieve compliance with accessibility guidelines and standards, such as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

Drupal ensures semantic markup, keyboard navigation, and descriptive alt text for images, benefiting users with visual impairments and assistive technologies. It even offers multilingual support to serve diverse audiences and simplifies translating content into different languages.

5. Integration capabilities: As institutions use various tools and platforms for their operations, Drupal's seamless integration capabilities allow for better alignment with existing systems.

It helps with integration through Customer Relationship Management (CRM) for data management, Learning Management Systems (LMS) for course management, Student Information Systems for administrative efficiency, Single Sign-On (SSO) for smooth login processes and Google Analytics (GA) for tracking website performance. There are many such ways Drupal’s integration capabilities support your higher ed website to enhance its performance and functionality.

Explore here in detail what makes Drupal the most preferred open-source CMS for your website.

What are the challenges of WordPress to Drupal migration?

WordPress Drupal migration can be complex due to the fundamental differences in the architecture and data structures of the two content management systems.

Here are some of the challenges you may encounter during the migration process:

1. Content migration: Transferring content from one platform to another can be complex, especially when dealing with vast amounts of data. The way content is formatted and stored in WordPress may not align with Drupal's standards.

Ensuring data integrity, URL mapping, and preserving SEO rankings are crucial aspects that require careful planning.

2. Data structure differences: WordPress and Drupal have different ways of organizing content and data. WordPress uses a simpler content structure with posts and pages, while Drupal has a more flexible entity-based system with nodes, taxonomies, and custom fields. This means that data mapping and transformation may be required during the migration.

3. Functionality differences: WordPress and Drupal have different sets of built-in functionalities and plugins/modules. During migration, you may need to find Drupal equivalents for WordPress plugins or develop custom modules to replicate the desired functionalities.

4. Staff training: Migrating from WordPress to Drupal involves providing comprehensive training to familiarize staff members with Drupal's different user interfaces, content management processes, theming, and customizations.

They must learn how to manage user roles and permissions, troubleshoot Drupal-specific issues, and handle content migration effectively. This helps ensure a smooth transition and enables you to make the most of Drupal's robust capabilities for website management.

5. Testing and quality assurance: Due to the complexities involved, migration may introduce errors or inconsistencies. Extensive testing and quality assurance are necessary to analyze the possible vulnerabilities to avoid any performance issues.

How Altudo's support can help digitally revolutionize your higher education institutions?

As a visionary leader at the helm of your higher education institution, you understand the importance of staying ahead in the fast-paced digital landscape. At Altudo, we help you elevate your higher education institutions to new heights.

For those seeking WordPress Drupal migration, our specialized support is tailored to meet your every need. Our comprehensive services address the unique needs of educational institutions, ensuring a seamless and successful migration.

Here’re some of our well-designed and curated services that can help you with a smooth content migration:

• Tailored consultation: Altudo starts by understanding your institution's specific goals, needs, and challenges. We conduct a thorough assessment of your current WordPress website and devise a migration strategy that aligns with your vision.


• Customized website development: Our team of expert Drupal developers creates custom solutions to meet your institution's branding and user experience requirements. Whether it's redesigning templates or integrating essential functionalities, we ensure your new Drupal website delivers a unique and engaging experience.


• Data migration and SEO preservation: Altudo employs a meticulous approach to content migration, ensuring that your data, URLs, and SEO rankings are preserved throughout the process. This attention to detail minimizes disruptions and maintains your website's visibility and search engine rankings.


• Accessibility compliance: We are committed to making your website accessible to all users. Altudo ensures that your website adheres to accessibility standards, providing an inclusive online experience for individuals with disabilities.


• Seamless integration: Our expertise in integrating Drupal with various third-party systems, such as CRM, LMS, and student information systems, streamlines your institution's operations and improves overall efficiency.


• Staff training and support: To ensure a smooth transition, Altudo offers training and ongoing support for your staff members. Our team assists in familiarizing your staff with Drupal's interface and features, empowering them to manage and update the website effectively.

Conclusion

WordPress or Drupal, both are extremely efficient CMS platforms, but it is never one-size-fits-all. Migrating to a Drupal website can help you build a more flexible and scalable education website to manage the ever-changing business requirements. Give your students, faculty, and visitors an uninterrupted browsing experience and enjoy the ease of centrally managing your content on the web.

If you are keen to migrate your higher ed website to Drupal for better functionality or are interested in exploring more about our support, then do not hesitate. Write to us at marketing@altudo.co and book your slot with our subject matter experts and understand our well curated roadmap towards a seamless transition.