Upgrading a website software version is one of the most complicated task a webmaster has to deal with when managing a website. Migrating from Drupal 7? Here is a small guide with various details. Let’s start with general info : You can type content straight into a block. Now, maybe you’ll find this dead obvious, but I’d been working for several months with Drupal before I realized that. As well as creating blocks with Drupal, you can also click ‘add block’ on the blocks page, and just type whatever text you like into your new block.
The very first thing you should do is to make a local version of the website. This is an essential step because making changes to a live website is very risky and is never a recommended practice. This way, if anything does go awry, your actual website will remain safe and functional. Though not yet perfect, the upgrade procedure in Drupal has come quite a long way. As you can see in this tutorial, the upgrade process is now very streamlined and is an integral part of the Drupal Core. If you liked this blog post, then give a read to another blog post by us on, How To Update Drupal 8 Core.
The upgrade process, and underlying Migration API, are still evolving. We don’t anticipate them changing dramatically even though they are still marked experimental. Beware of any resources that were written before Drupal 8.1.x was released (April 19, 2016) as the system changed considerably in ways that invalidate many of the older articles.
The steps above outline how to get a distribution minimally installed on an existing site. But you’ll still have a lot of work to do to reconcile your existing site content and structure with what has been created by the distribution. Here are a few tips to get you started–but you should begin with the assumption that there will be lots more you’ll discover and need to fix. Most distributions are built using the Features module, which allows exporting configuration from a Drupal site – content types, fields, views, and so on – into code, so that it can be enabled on multiple sites. For components like content types and fields to be exportable, they need to have a “machine name”–a unique name that will be the same on every site they’re enabled on. For example, a date-type field used to store the date of an event might have the machine name field_date.
Drupal distributions are usually used as a starting point for developing a new website. The most straightforward way to use a distribution is to install it from scratch. From there, you can selectively migrate in content from other sources, including one or more existing websites. Migrating data here might be as simple as copying and pasting several pages from an old site into the new site. For larger sites, it could involve writing custom migration scripts or using an existing Drupal module like Migrate or Feeds.
You must first understand how your current site is built, and this starts with taking an accurate inventory of the Drupal modules you are currently using. This information is pretty easy to find (Administer > Site building > Modules, or go to the Available Updates page at admin/reports/updates), and this type of preparation will come in handy a bit later in your upgrade process. Will I still need this particular module in Drupal 8? Your Drupal developers are best positioned to answer this question, and they’ll certainly need some knowledge of Drupal 8 core modules ahead of time before giving a definitive “yes” or “no.” See extra details on Migrating to Drupal 8.