Moving to Drupal

Moving to Drupal - Turning a Legacy Site into a CMS Site Presented by Mark W. Jarrell Drupal Username: attheshow FleetThought.com, Austin Peay State University http://drupal.org/user/249768 August 28, 2010 http://ﬂeetthought.com

What are we talking about? ✤ Two possible scenarios: ✤ Converting from a static non- database driven site ✤ Converting from a legacy site that lives in a database ✤ How to get this all moved into Drupal ✤ List of applications, modules, code, and a few tips and tricks to help you make the transition smooth

Example Scenario ✤ Legacy site w/ news stories in an Access database ✤ We want to automatically migrate these in as Drupal nodes and not pull them all over manually ✤ URLs look like this: http://www.apsu.edu/News/show_news.asp?id=4271 ✤ New URLs should look like this: http://www.apsu.edu/news/apsu-professor-visits-israel- counterterrorism-fellowship

Example Scenario ✤ Also... we want users to still be able to type in the old URLs and get to what they're looking for. Or, if they have any of the old addresses bookmarked, those bookmarks should continue to work for them after the transition.

Why do we need to think about this? ✤ Migration piece - you can save a ton of time and effort especially if your content is already in a database ✤ Redirects can make your users’ lives easier ✤ An easier transition makes your project appear more successful to internal users.

Step 1 - Get it into MySQL ✤ Weapon of Choice: MySQL Migration Toolkit ✤ Download: http:// dev.mysql.com/downloads/gui- tools/5.0.html ✤ Overview of using it w/ screenshots to convert from an Oracle database: http:// theopensourcery.com/ mymigrate.htm

Step 2 - Let Drupal Know About the New Data ✤ settings.php ✤ add in the new database connection string

Step 3 - Grab Your Modules ✤ Views http://drupal.org/project/views ✤ Schema http://drupal.org/project/ schema ✤ Table Wizard http://drupal.org/project/tw ✤ Migrate & Migrate Extras (CCK) http://drupal.org/project/ migrate

Step 4 - Pathauto (optional) ✤ If you’re using Pathauto... http://drupal.org/project/ pathauto ✤ Decide how you want your URL paths to look early in the process ✤ Migrate module will create new nodes using your Pathauto conﬁguration

Step 5 - Migrate the Content ✤ A) Use Table Wizard to “expose” the legacy table Makes it available to Views and Migrate modules. ✤ B) Add a Migrate “content set” that maps which data goes into which ﬁelds ✤ C) Make sure things are migrating correctly by doing trial runs ✤ D) May need to build a custom module to assist. ✤ E) Final migration

Step 5 - Migrate the Content (con’t.) ✤ DEMO

Step 5 - Migrate the Content (con’t.) ✤ Tips and Tricks w/ Migrate ✤ you can also migrate things like comments and users ✤ it keeps track of which legacy row became which Drupal node in a table named “migrate_map_[contentset]” ✤ It also takes a bit of extra effort and practice, but you can also make content sets dependent upon one another. Example: Import your users from the old database, then the blog posts written by each user, then the comments by all users that were made upon the blog posts by the users (maintaining all of the connections between these different items). ✤ show custom module w/ hook being used

Step 6 - Set Up Redirects in .htaccess ✤ This ﬁle is included w/ Drupal by default, but it’s really more related to Apache server than to Drupal itself. ✤ Gives you lots of power to manipulate how users access your site.

Step 6 - Set Up Redirects in .htaccess (con’t.) ✤ If doing any manual migration (we did a ton of this on the apsu.edu site), you can set up any general redirects in .htaccess ✤ Example: ✤ RewriteRule ^general(.*)$ /about-apsu$1 [NC,R=301,L] ✤ Redirects from: http://www.apsu.edu/general/mission to: http://www.apsu.edu/about-apsu/mission

Step 6 - Set Up Redirects in .htaccess (con’t.) ✤ You can also chop off legacy ﬁle extensions in .htaccess ✤ Example: ✤ RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(.*).aspx$ RewriteRule ^.*$ %1 [R=301,L] ✤ Redirects from: http://www.apsu.edu/physics/facstaff.aspx to: http://www.apsu.edu/physics/facstaff

Step 6 - Set Up Redirects in .htaccess (con’t.) ✤ For nodes imported via Migrate module, you can redirect in .htaccess from the legacy URL to the new URL ✤ Example: ✤ RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^.*id=([0-9]+).*$ RewriteRule ^News/show_news.asp.*$ /migrate/xlat/node/%1? [NC,R=301,L] ✤ Redirects from: http://www.apsu.edu/News/show_news.asp?id=4271 to: http://www.apsu.edu/news/apsu-professor-visits-israel-counterterrorism- fellowship ✤ Note: You must leave Migrate module enabled on your site for this process to work.

Step 6 - Set Up Redirects in .htaccess (con’t.) ✤ Tips on redirects in .htaccess ✤ Look at the Apache manual page for help. http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_rewrite.html ✤ Don’t make any changes to .htaccess without ﬁrst testing it on a development version of the site. This is powerful stuff.

Further Reading Links ✤ Apache Manual Page on Rewrites http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_rewrite.html ✤ DrupalCon D.C. Session - “Migration - Not Just For the Birds” http://dc2009.drupalcon.org/session/migration-not-just-birds ✤ Lullabot Article - Migration Module http://www.lullabot.com/articles/drupal-data-imports-migrate-and- table-wizard

Moving to Drupal - Turning a Legacy Site into a CMS Site Presented by Mark W. Jarrell Drupal Username: attheshow FleetThought.com, Austin Peay State University http://drupal.org/user/249768 August 28, 2010 http://ﬂeetthought.com

Moving to Drupal

by Mark Jarrell

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Moving to Drupal

by Mark Jarrell

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