By coronet on

Hello,

I converted my site to a CMS in December using Joomla!, as it seemed to be the best solution in some quick reviews. Snooping around, I feel my site is better fit for Drupal. It doesn't need to be bloated with such options. Is there a converter, or am I gonna have to redo my whole site? It's not too big of a deal, as I got not too involved, but it would be nice if there was a transition script of something.

Lastly, and biggest question, is the skin. The biggest require I'd say is that I need a fashionable dark/black skin. It seems most skins here focus on light background over dark ones, which is a no-go for me. Can someone show some darker themes here I can perhaps use?

Here is my site, with the skin in question, BTW:
http://www.bigrevmedia.com/

⋅ Categories: Drupal 4.6.x

Comments

sepeck’s picture

sepeck commented

Wow, that's dark.... You could convert the theme tho. Don't know enough about migration to comment on ease/difficulty of it.

-sp
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-Steven Peck
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coronet’s picture

coronet commented

Would I do this by redoing the CSS all by myself, or is there any easy generator availble?

venkat-rk’s picture

venkat-rk commented

You could try the theme generator. I haven't used it myself, just offering this as a suggestion:
http://drupal.org/node/34324

peterdd’s picture

peterdd commented

I have the same problem. I think about writing a conversion module (when familiar with drupal coding and make the move) and started comparing the tables of the two cms.

The main steps to be done:

  1. migration setup: getting db parameter of old cms and a first selection of what parts of the old cms should be migrated to drupal. maybe checks like enough free webspace, database rights and capabilities, directory and file creation rights.
  2. copy of usertypes to roles table. easy. there are only hardcoded anon, registered, author, editor, manager, admin, super admin => 7 or less (if a usertype is not used by a user) roles in drupal
  3. user tables: because both are using the same hashing algorithm a conversion should be easy without regenerating the passwords.
    users can use their old password.
  4. sections/categories of joomla to taxonomy of drupal?
  5. content and images:harder work because joomla and drupal have different approaches to insert/reference images within content.
  6. menus
  7. themes, not too hard. migrate the css-files. rename classes and ids where necessary, adapt imagepaths for pagebackground etc., a candidate for optionally manual task
  8. additional migration steps for popular components/modules/mambots to drupal equivalents. (migration plugins?)

Every state should log its status and use database transactions, so if long tasks are unfinished when script execution time is limited they can be continued safely without inconsistency in the database.

If something is unfinished or has errors then stay in current status or if all fine go to the next step. When the admin starts again the migration module it should be where its last run stopped.

drupalancers’s picture

drupalancers commented

Hey Coronet

Do you have a list of what components and templates you are using on Joomla to allow us to see if there are equivilant Drupal modules?

www.Drupalancers.com. Custom-Made Drupal Themes, Modules, Blocks and Websites.

sun’s picture

sun
Primary language German
Location Karlsruhe
commented

Hi Peter,

your approach looks quite interesting. Although I think that developing a module for migrating from Joomla! to Drupal mainly depends on the given Joomla! website. To clearify:

  • If you run a site with a load of page contents (i.e. news, articles, ...) then you'd probably prefer a solution which is focusing on migrating the contents to Drupal.
  • If you run a community or portal site (i.e. forum, private messenger, user profiles, ...) then you'd probably like to see a solution to convert all that stuff into a new shiny Drupal site.

I will face that second migration type in the next two months. The migration of page contents isn't my primary interest because there aren't that many, instead it is:

  • Generate identical Drupal user roles for the existing Joomla user groups.
  • Import and migrate all users from Joomla into Drupal, with respect to their Joomla user rights (-> Drupal user roles).
  • Generate a remapping matrix to re-assign Joomla forum postings, PMs and other stuff to the migrated user IDs in Drupal.
  • Import contents of those Joomla components (forum, PM, ...) into Drupal while steadily remapping content IDs, user IDs and security IDs.
  • Create extensive ReWrite Rules to redirect people accessing old Joomla URLs to new Drupal contents.

As you might see, my approach differs from yours slightly, since I mainly need to migrate the (user) data instead of migrating hard-coded site data, which I'd prefer to create by myself and not by a migration engine.

Anyone interested in this migration process? Maybe it'll work faster if concept and work is shared. Just contact me!

greetings,
sun

Daniel 'sun' Kudwien
makers99

hAppY pAppY’s picture

hAppY pAppY commented

That have been using Joomla/Mambo for about a year or so. I'm pretty happy with it overall, however I've just found out one of my biggest clients is moving the site to new servers. They don't support Joomla because of security risks, so I'm in need of a solution to transform my current Joomla! site to Drupal. You guys will probably be hearing from me as I try and figure out how all of this works, but I learned Joomla! pretty quickly so it shouldn't be too hard. If anyone has any suggestions or would like to see the current site, let me know and I'll post the URL.

shrill’s picture

shrill commented

Hi sun.

I have just decided to move from an old Mambo site to Drupal. Not too concerned about the content as I want to redo a lot of that anyway (it is out of date) but I have an artists directory using the Community Builder component (each with their own profile with picture, personalized fields etc) as well as my user information that I do want to transfer.

Anyone want to recommend a good way to transfer this information and is there a good "match" for Community Builder in Drupal? I have looked at the User Profiles and can do almost everything I want, but I need the ability to add a thumbnail, and then list users by the answers they give (i.e. those artists that list "visual arts" in a different list than those that list "literary arts" etc.).

See http://www.canadianartsnet.com to see what I mean.

Cheers,

Cheryl

sun’s picture

sun
Primary language German
Location Karlsruhe
commented

Hi Cheryl,

just looked at your site. You're using CB + simpleboard + Events + Yanc, which are almost the same 3rd party components we're using at www.DancerZone.com. Although we're running Joomla I doubt that there will be major differences in migrating these sites to Drupal.

I am thinking of a PHP script that converts all the Joomla/Mambo data to Drupal, including the most (in best case all) relationships between users and user data (e.g. user profile, forum posts, event submissions, newsletter subscriptions and content items).

In my opinion this script should be as modular as possible, so other people are able to convert their sites from Joomla/Mambo to Drupal, too. Maybe this could be also somewhat of a Drupal Joomla.migration.module which can be installed temporarily to migrate a site from Joomla/Mambo to Drupal. I have to investigate this option in the Drupal migration forums...

Another issue is the migration of urls which may be accomplished by RewriteRules (or perhaps the migration.module?).

Let me know if you're interested in co-development and if you have the required programming skills to team up for this project. Also, if there are other developers interested in this project, let me know. If there are folks who would like to sponsor this development, even better. Setting up a Donorge project would be very suitable. Just leave me a message.

As for now, we've planned to approach the migration by end of May/early June.

Daniel F. Kudwien
unleashed mind

Daniel 'sun' Kudwien
makers99

shrill’s picture

shrill commented

Unfortunately I'm really not a programmer. Lots of experience with design/ html etc. but no hardcore programming. It sounds like an excellent project though.

What are you going to move to (ie. which Drupal modules are you going to replace your Joomla ones with?)

Cheryl

mgifford’s picture

mgifford
he/him
Primary language English
commented

There are some potentially useful ideas here:
http://drupal.org/node/80195
http://geeksandgod.com/forum/ministry-technology-q-a-7
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