Drupal 8 Migration Strategies

One of the biggest challenges on every Drupal project build is how to migrate content from the previous site. Developers are tasked with migrating content from a variety of sources: Drupal, Wordpress, Sharepoint, Sitecore, SQL, static files, you name it.

The most popular module for Drupal migrations, the Migrate module is now in Drupal 8 core. The Migrate API is powerful but difficult to learn. Our team launched a production Drupal 8 website using Migrate before Drupal 8.0 was even released. Is Migrate API always the best choice? We’ll discuss. We are also close to launching a Drupal 8 site that only uses Drush to migrate content. While we’re talking options, remember Feeds? We will even talk about how Feeds could be in the mix sometime in the future when the Drupal 8 port is finished.

This session will discuss migration options using real world case studies and live demos. Attendees will come away with knowledge of how to get started with Migrate or how to leverage what they already know to write custom migrations using Drush. As a bonus we will bring up how Feeds has been handy in the past and could be in the toolbox in the future. Want to know about scraping content in Drupal 8? We’ll talk about that too. Don’t fear Drupal 8, together we will Migrate All The Things™!

Watch this short video to get a preview of our session.

• Present overview of Drupal 8 Migrate API changes
• Walk through case study of Manh.com with Drupal 8 Migrate
• Demo a Hello World D8 Migrate example for the audience
• Discuss Drush as a custom option for migrating content
• Walk through case study of Replacements.com using Drush
• Show code snippets of how to save entities in code
• Talk about screen scraping in Drupal 8 to fetch content
• Talk through pros and cons of the Drush approach
• Touch on Feeds in Drupal 7, could this be a good option in the future?
• Wrap-up / Q&A

Jay Callicott is a Director of Development for Mediacurrent and an enthusiastic Drupal developer for over 10 years. He is also the maintainer of the popular OpenChurch Drupal distribution.

Jay is an avid supporter and contributor to Drupal open source projects. Jay writes blogs on Drupal and has spoken at several Drupal events including Drupalcon Austin in 2014, NYC Camp in 2015, and past Drupal camps in Atlanta and Washington DC.

Nathan James is a Senior Drupal Developer for Mediacurrent. Nathan has a love for open source in general and has been involved in Drupal development for the past 5 years. One his biggest accomplishments during this time was the successful launch of one of the earliest Drupal 8 production builds in 2015.

• Migrate API documentation in Drupal 8 - https://www.drupal.org/node/2127611
• Nathan James Knowledge Share on Drupal 8 Migrate - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03DnzMQSgCs&feature=youtu.be