Inform yourself about upgrading from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8

Upgrading a website script version is one of the most complicated procedure a webmaster encounters when managing a website. Drupal 7 Upgrade? 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.

Note: Earlier, there used to be a migrate_plus module in Drupal 8 core which contained all the pieces of migrate functionality that wasn’t able to make it in the Drupal 7 core. It contained all the plugins for the support of XML, CSV and JSON data sources along with the support for databases like MS SQL or Oracle. This module has now been split into different modules, namely migrate_plus, migrate_tools and migrate_source_csv. When done with the installation of the modules, you will have to navigate to the upgrade path. For this, go to www.yoursite.com/upgrade (remember to replace yoursite with the name of your Drupal 8 website). You will be brought to the following screen. Please make sure you follow the directions on the screen before proceeding.

If you’re importing data from a non-Drupal datastore, start with Set up Migrate Demo Site and Source Data . We’ll walk through the process of connecting the migrate system to an external data source, writing custom migration paths, using custom process plugins to transform data during import, and best practices for executing your custom migrations. We’ll primarily look at using an external MySQL database as our data source, but the techniques learned will apply to any data source. We’ll also discuss how to extract data from CSV, JSON, and XML sources.

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.

Here are basic steps to take to upgrade an existing Drupal site to use a distribution. These are rough guidelines only. Because each site and each distribution is configured differently, you’re likely to run into additional complexities. But these notes should at least get you started in the right direction. Select a distribution to use. You’ll want to find the distribution that most closely matches your site requirements. See the listings and comparisons of Drupal distributions on drupal.org.

There is no easy way around it: upgrading to Drupal 8 is a big change that requires time and attention. To help ease your anxiety around this, we’ve put together a comprehensive overview of the various implications surrounding the upgrade process to Drupal 8, including how to best prepare yourself, your Drupal website, and your team for the project. Read extra details at Drupal 8 Migration.