GovCMS Drupal migrations

GovCMS migrations need to account for the platform's specific module set, hosting model (SaaS vs PaaS), security and compliance requirements, and the Australian Government Design System, meaning generic Drupal migration experience isn't automatically the same as GovCMS-specific migration experience, and a partner should be able to demonstrate GovCMS-specific migration delivery, not just Drupal migrations generally.

Drupal 7 reached end-of-life in January 2025, meaning security patches have stopped, an agency running a GovCMS 7 site is carrying real security exposure the longer this continues, and migration planning should be treated as a near-term priority, not a "someday" project.

Not necessarily in full, but migration is a natural opportunity to fix accumulated content and information-architecture debt at the same time as the technical upgrade, since you're already touching every piece of content, most organisations find the marginal cost of improving structure during migration is far lower than doing it as a separate project later.

The two biggest risks are losing content or search rankings through poor URL and metadata handling, and simply replicating old structural problems (inconsistent content types, messy taxonomies) on new infrastructure. Both are managed the same way: proper content modelling and a redirect strategy planned before migration begins, not bolted on afterwards.

With proper planning, yes. Mapping old URLs to new ones with correct redirects, preserving metadata and structured data, and validating indexing before and after go-live are standard, well-understood practices. Ranking loss during migration is almost always a sign of a rushed or under-planned redirect strategy, not an inherent risk of moving to Drupal.

A discovery and content audit - understanding what content exists, what's still valuable, what should be retired, and how it should be re-modelled in Drupal comes before any technical migration work. Migrating without this step usually means moving years of content debt onto new infrastructure rather than actually improving it.