Whisperingmeadows.ca Drupal 10 migration

Goals:

1. Switch from the outdated Drupal and PHP to assure longer security support and have better performance and feature set.
2. Provide a better experience from the administration point as well as for users.
3. Refresh the site design.

Steps we went through during the migration:

1. Migration is highly desirable: Drupal 7 (D7) is outdated, and our goal is to automate many processes that were previously performed manually. Continuing to use D7 is unjustified for several reasons. Firstly, D7 is nearing its end-of-life (EOL). Secondly, there is a declining interest among developers in maintaining it. 
2. Migration plan: We began by analyzing the contributed modules that were utilized. The primary module that played a central role in the overall functionality was Ubercart for D7. After careful consideration, we made the decision to replace it with Commerce 2 for D10. Since there was only a small amount of custom code involved, we chose to re-implement it entirely from scratch in D10. 
3. Content migration: The catalog consisted of only a few hundred products, but the main challenge arose due to the architectural differences between Ubercart and Commerce 2. While Ubercart provided extensive flexibility with product variations, it often resulted in stock management issues (which we aimed to address after migrating to D10). Conversely, Commerce 2 offered more structured product types, encouraging better organization. Initially, our plan was to fully automate the migration process. This required a comprehensive understanding of the Ubercart product database structure and involved processing, as variation data in Ubercart was serialized. Before rebuilding everything in Commerce 2, we made adjustments to how products were categorized into different types with their respective attributes. However, a few specific products were manually migrated to D10, as it proved faster than developing a dedicated migration process for them. 
4. Theming: We developed the new theme from scratch, incorporating the latest designs. It was built on top of the contributed Radix theme. 
5. Creating new testing instances and planning incremental migrations allowed us to assess migration results in real-time. 
6. The Launch: Once all core systems were in place, we disabled the old site and replaced it with the shiny new D10 version.

At this stage, the migration process was successfully completed. Subsequently, we focused on further improvements and automation on the new site.

The Results:

1. The catalog and content were seamlessly migrated to the D10 site, and significant improvements were made to the catalog's structure, enabling more efficient stock management within Drupal itself.
2. Numerous tasks that once demanded manual effort or continuous monitoring are now automated and reliable.
3. We introduced sales reporting capabilities to assist administrators in analyzing popular items and identifying opportunities for further sales growth.
4. Integration with QuickBooks and Routific services was implemented to support accountants in their tasks and optimize delivery routes.