---
title: "Migrating from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 - A brief guide"
description: "You have to agree that nobody migrates to another place if they find no advantages in doing so. Migrating is always a tedious and complex task but that is nothing compared to the benefits it offers. When you migrate your website from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8, you will have a website that performs…"
url: https://www.specbee.com/blogs/migrating-drupal-7-drupal-8-brief-guide
type: Article
author: "Shefali Shetty"
categories: "Drupal Talk"
published: 2017-02-28
updated: 2026-10-05
---

# Migrating from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 - A brief guide

Migrating is always a tedious and complex task but that is nothing compared to the benefits it offers. When your website migrates from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8, you will have a website that performs better, has a more user-friendly UI and UX, better support, improvised security, and many more amazing features.

## Here are a few reasons why you should consider Drupal 7 to 8 Migration:

1. You get most of the functionalities out-of-the-box which means you don’t need to install and use additional [contributed Drupal modules](https://www.drupal.org/docs/8/extending-drupal-8/finding-contributed-modules) to take care of some major important tasks.
2. Responsiveness is also out-of-the-box – So you don’t have to worry about how your Drupal website will look like on different devices.
3. Content authors will love it as Drupal 8 provides a more organized, clean and user-friendly interface to manage content.
4. A lot of documentation is available to help [drupal developers](https://www.specbee.com/services/drupal-staff-augmentation) in having a better and more knowledgeable experience.
5. Drupal 8 theming is powered with ‘Twig’, which is a PHP-based template engine. It is less complex than PHP template and also provides a more secure theming layer.
6. ...and there are a lot more reasons why we should consider, drupal 7 to 8 migration.

## So, How complex is Drupal 7 to 8 Migration?

Well, that depends on the complexity of your website. The more stuff you have on your drupal website, the more problems you are likely to run into. By “stuff”, I mean modules – both drupal [custom modules](https://www.specbee.com/blogs/drupal-8-custom-modules-creating-efficient-drupal-8-modules-with-these-best-practices) and Contributed modules, content types, vocabularies, etc. Many modules from Drupal 7 have been replaced by new modules in Drupal 8 and some inactive drupal 7 modules that have no support or are obsolete, are going to be unavailable. For such modules, you might need to do some manual drupal 7 to 8 upgrading.

## Methods of Drupal 7 to 8 Migration :

Drupal 8 not only makes website building more powerful and easy, it also makes [migration simple and quick](https://www.specbee.com/services/drupal-migration-upgrade). With Drupal 8 core, comes three modules that can help you migrate from Drupal 6 or 7 to Drupal 8 easily.

1\. You will first need to create a fresh new website on Drupal 8 and enable the core drupal migration modules. Using the browser user-interface you can now start the Drupal 8 migration process. That’s it!

2\. Once done, you can review drupal 7 to 8 migration messages and make changes as required. You might notice some Drupal 8 migration error messages at this stage.

3\. Let’s say, if you have some modules that also need to be migrated to Drupal 8 unless you enable and configure them in your Drupal 8 website, it will not get migrated and you may run into ‘Missing path’ errors.

4\. If you have a large database and a highly complex Drupal website to be migrated, using some [contributed Drupal modules](https://www.drupal.org/docs/8/modules) that use Drush commands are recommended.

Let us look at some Drupal 8 migrate modules for drupal 7 to 8 migration:

## 1. Core Migrate Modules in Drupal 8:

**Migrate Module** – This migrate module provides the framework for content drupal 8 migration.

**Migrate Drupal** **Module** – This module provides classes and functions to migrate content and configuration to Drupal 8.

**Migrate Drupal UI** – This module provides a user-interface and tools that are needed to perform an upgrade drupal 7 to Drupal 8.

## 2. Contributed Drupal Modules for Drupal 8:

**Migrate Upgrade** – Provides Drush support for migrating or upgrading drupal 6 or 7 to drupal 8 .
**Migrate Tools** – Provides tools to manage Drupal 8 migration, like listing migrations and statuses, performing imports, performing rollbacks, stopping an operation, etc.
**Migrate UI** – Provides a user interface for editing and configuring migrations to Drupal 8.
**Drupal Module Upgrader** – Provides Drush scripts for converting module code from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8.

After Drupal 9 hits the town, you will have about 3 more months of Drupal 7 support. Which means you actually don’t need to worry about drupal 8 migration as yet but when Drupal 8 is offering such cool and powerful feature upgrades, isn’t it a wise decision to make the move now? At Specbee, we provide exceptional [Drupal development services](https://www.specbee.com/services/drupal-web-development) that can help you migrate with ease.