The biggest advantages of Drupal 9 and how to migrate

As you might know, the end-of-life of Drupal 7 and Drupal 8 is a fact. A little while ago Drupal announced the end-of-life of both Drupal 7 and Drupal 8 and let us know that both Drupal 7 and 8 will be supported by the Drupal community until November 2021. They also announced that Drupal 9 will be released, in fact, this already happened on the 3rd of June this year. If you want a secure website, you need to migrate from Drupal 7 or 8 to the newest platform as soon as possible. How you should do that and the reason why you will find it in this blog.

A secure website 

One of the biggest advantages of Drupal is that the open-source CMS is known as one of the most secure platforms out there. That is probably also one of the reasons you choose the platform in the first place. If you want to be insured of a secure website, you need to migrate as soon as possible to Drupal 9. If you don’t migrate, your website could be in danger. The end-of-life means that Drupal will not support the platforms and will not create any security updates. 

Drupal 7 -> Drupal 8 -> Drupal 9

So now you are probably wondering how you need to migrate. To answer that question there are two scenarios.

  1. If you have a site that is running on Drupal 7, then the time is now to start planning the upgrade. Be prepared that migration from Drupal 7 to Drupal 9 can be a long and hard process because you first need to migrate from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 and then make the update to Drupal 9. The migration from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 is a big step. As said before the end-of-life date was November 2021, but given the impact of COVID-19 on budgets and businesses, Drupal has extended the end-of-life of Drupal 7 until November 28, 2022. The end-of-life of Drupal 8 is still the same and is November 2021. Luckily when you are using Drupal 8 the migration to Drupal 9 is verily easy.
  2. The transition from Drupal 8 to Drupal 9 will not be the significant effort that the transition from 7 to 8 was. The first release of Drupal 9 will be identical to the last release of Drupal 8, except with deprecated code removed and dependencies updated to newer versions. This means that Drupal 8.9.0 is also released on the 3rd of June. It contains the same features as Drupal 9.0.0 while keeping backwards compatibility with Drupal 8. This final minor version of Drupal 8 will receive long-term support, with bug fixes and security coverage until November 2021. Meanwhile, Drupal 9 will continue to receive new features in Drupal 9.1 (out in December 2020) and beyond.

 

Our advice is to make sure you are running on the most recent Drupal platform available. If you are then you only need to make a few small changes to your platform to transfer to Drupal 9. Due to the COVID period Drupal also set up a special program for some companies to get extended support but it is not a given you are eligible for the extended support and you first need to apply via this form.  

Drupal 9, the biggest advantages

As said before if you want a secure and reliable site then the best option is to migrate to Drupal 9. Also, the platform is developed with good reasons and has a lot of new features. The biggest advantages of Drupal 9 are:

  • Drupal 9 is a DXP, Digital Experience Platform, instead of a standard CMS a DXP makes it possible to create a great experience on every channel and that is more important than ever. Your customers have changed and evolved they know what they want and if you don’t offer them the best possible User Experience, they will look for someone who does. Having a DXP instead of a CMS is very important if you want your business to grow and become a digital leader.
  • Drupal 9 is API-first which gives you endless opportunities. Because of the API-first structure, it is easy to create a headless or decoupled frontend and backend. 
  • Drupal 9 is a great multilingual platform and has easy translation options, which is great if you are located in more then one countries. 
  • The creator of Drupal, Dries Buytaert, described Drupal 9.1+ as a platform where future innovation happens. The platform will pave the way for faster and better performance of websites. 
  • The newest version of Drupal, Drupal 9, is seen as a leading open-source digital experience framework. It will combine all the benefits of open-source software with powerful enterprise capabilities. 


Are you ready to learn more about the new platform and how to get there? Contact our Drupal experts.

Learn more about Drupal 9 by talking to our experts!

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact our experts. 

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