End-of-life of Drupal 7: everything you need to know
Although the Drupal Association has postponed the end-of-lifetime of Drupal 7 by a year until November 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic (Drupal 8 is not even supported as of November 2, 2021), migration to Drupal 9 is inevitable. In this article you can read everything you need to know to keep your site safe and reliable on the air and how we can help you do that.
With a free technical scan, for example. jouw url hier<">Request it now!
I have a Drupal 7 website. So should I migrate to Drupal 9 now?
Once End of Life sets in, your website will not suddenly go dark. It simply means that there will be no more active development on the CMS and no more security releases. However, the Drupal Association is looking for official partners who will continue to provide support for Drupal 7, and possibly the global community of Drupal developers will continue development. For the long term, however, migration is a necessary step: much of what you are currently developing in Drupal 7 you will have to redo in Drupal 9. To avoid wasting time and money, we therefore recommend that you start thinking about migration now.
What exactly does a migration entail?
A migration involves converting all content, functionality and display to a new system. The migration from Drupal 7 to Drupal 9 is primarily a content migration. If it is structured according to the standards for Nodes, Taxonomy Terms, Users, Files and Media then it can be largely automated.
However, due to the major difference from Drupal 7, functionality will usually have to be migrated manually. Fortunately, since a version of most modules in Drupal 7 is also available for Drupal 9, conceptually not too much needs to be changed.
However, the view, called a "theme" in Drupal, has been completely overhauled for version 8 or later. Therefore, an old theme cannot simply be migrated; you will have to develop a new theme for it. Many website owners therefore also take advantage of the migration to immediately implement improvements to the visual design and user experience.
And what if my site is built in Drupal 8?
Drupal 9 is built in Drupal 8, making it nothing more than a minor upgrade (you can read more about the plan behind Drupal 9 here. Therefore, a migration is not necessary. Read more about upgrading from Drupal 8 to Drupal 9 here.
Are there any alternatives?
Of course, there are alternatives to Drupal and you can switch to another CMS. But if Drupal 7 was previously the most logical choice for your website then Drupal 9 will be too: the benefits have remained the same.
If you have a platform with a lot of functionality you might also consider migrating to a "headless" or "decoupled" setup of Drupal. In this setup, you separate the front-end (the part that people see and use) from the back-end (the CMS, the system used purely by administrators). The result is that the back-end no longer displays the content as a site but makes it available to the front-end application via a so-called API (application programming interface). Dries Buytaert has written a good article on how to do this.
A big advantage is that front- and back-end can therefore be developed separately and kept up-to-date. This allows you to implement a new visual design fairly easily in the front-end and future migrations are much less drastic. A headless CMS also makes it possible to migrate components incrementally so that you can spread the costs over a longer period of time.
You can read more about the optimal use of Drupal as a headless CMS in this extensive article by our CTO Martijn Houtman.
Can you migrate my Drupal site?
Yes, is the short answer to that. As a Drupal specialist, we have already gone through a number of migrations and are well prepared for this. However, the amount of work is strongly related to the level of complexity. We determine this with a brief technical assessment; a "scan" of the structure and operation of the website. For this we at least need administrator access to the CMS. Even better is to also get access to the source code and database to get a really good picture.
Free technical scan by Unc Inc?
To get you started, until November 2021 we are offering you the chance to have a free technical assessment of your site done by a specialist from Unc Inc. We start with an introductory conversation: how did you get to this point and what are your plans for the future? With this in mind, we look at the technology of your website. We make an analysis and advise you on how to approach the migration and development of new components. With a realistic estimate of the costs, you can thus make an informed choice for the future of your website.