Drupal 7 to Drupal 9 migration tips and tricks covering typical hurdles you may face during a migration journey.
Our approach to the upgrade
Start with a site audit
A site audit is a separate deliverable that you can use to scope and plan the next phases. It reviews accessibility, SEO, design, content model, functionality, roles, content moderation, and migration.
Choose between an uplift and a rebuild
We compare the two options against your site's size, complexity, and migration effort, then recommend one.
Keep what matters, improve what doesn't work
Your content and data are valuable, so we preserve and enhance them. We map your URLs to protect search rankings. A rebuild can also bring a new brand or style guide, an improved content model, new features, content strategy and design, and better workflow and moderation processes.
Deliver in clear phases
The project runs through establishment, discovery, definition, build, migration, testing, training, pre-deployment, deployment, and post-deployment. See our GovCMS migration and Drupal migration services.
Train your editors on the new layout tools
Layout Builder changes how editors build pages. We include editor training, so your team is ready at go-live.
Frequently asked questions
Panelizer was the older page layout tool used in earlier GovCMS builds. Layout Builder is Drupal core's actively maintained replacement, with better long-term support, a cleaner editing experience, and compatibility with newer Drupal features. A site still on Panelizer runs on an approach that will get harder to support over time.
Panelizer isn't developed for current and future Drupal core versions, so the risk grows with every release. It's better to plan the upgrade ahead of time than to be forced into it by a compatibility break at an inconvenient moment, such as just before an end-of-life deadline.
Your page layouts and configuration move from the old system to Layout Builder's data structures. We then test that editing and page rendering still work correctly. It's also a chance to review whether your existing page-building patterns still suit your editors.
It depends on size and complexity. For many legacy sites, an uplift costs about the same as a rebuild plus migration, so we recommend Layout Builder as the target either way. The site audit gives you the evidence to decide.
We map old URLs to new ones to protect your rankings, and we preserve your content and data.
The GovCMS timeline for removing Panelizer, was before the upgrade to Drupal 11 in 2025.
Case studies
Case study
Morpht was able to provide IPEA with a new website on the GovCMS SaaS platform, upgraded to Drupal 9 and allow site editors to import all reporting data without the need of external help. The site also has a greatly improved page speed and a new design and interface which maximises the findability of Parliamentarian expense reports.
Case study
The TGA are now celebrating a brand new site on GovCMS. With a contemporary look and feel underpinned by consistent structures and familiar patterns, this site is now the foundation for the next stage of the digital transformation the TGA is undergoing.
Case study
Morpht re-architected 1,200 pages and more than 6,000 publications, factsheet and forms into 9 site sections and improved their discoverability with faceted searches.
Case study
A Drupal 8 build involving migration of content from a legacy CMS system and developing a technically challenging fail-safe data update functionality from a third party SOAP data feed.
Latest insights
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Morpht is proud to announce a new release of Convivial for GovCMS which includes personalisation and improved content types, architecture and components.