Drupal 7 was launched in 2011.
For over a decade, Drupal 7 has played its part in serving the open-source community.
Initially, the end of life for Drupal 7 was November 2021. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, this timeline was extended to November 28, 2022, and then to November 1, 2023. And the final deadline is announced recently in DrupalCon 2023. The last date for Drupal 7 support is on Jan 5, 2025.
The Drupal community and this community website (D7upgrade.org) recommend that Drupal 7 websites plan a migration immediately. An extension beyond January 5, 2025, will not happen.
Why move on from Drupal 7?
Other than the problem of zero support from the community, the following are the two main reasons to make the switch now.
Security
The Drupal security team will soon cease to provide security advisories, wavering the websites and cyber security. Drupal 7 and Drupal 8 versions will get flagged as insecure in the 3rd party scans.
Drupal 8 reached the end of life already in November 2021.
Hence it is essential to plan and execute your Drupal migration from to 9 or from any other version, before facing any security implications.
With the end of Drupal security support for the older versions,i.e. Drupal 7 and 8, expecting support from the community for issues arising in core or contributed modules would be a tall ask. It will be a strong point for failure.
Custom Modules
The migration of custom modules in Drupal 7 has been talked about, a lot.
For the sake of repeating it, please note that custom modules in Drupal 7 will not be migrated automatically to higher versions of Drupal.
Custom modules have to be migrated manually. Period.
Other Issues
Other than security and manual custom module migration with Drupal 7, the following issues will also come up,
- Functionality
- Integrations
Get help
The D7upgrade.org is committed to helping each Drupal 7 website owner as they evaluate their migration options. Please take us up.
What are the Options for Drupal 7 Website Owners?
Drupal 9
Choosing Drupal 9 will be one of the best decisions for a technology leader. Drupal 9 was released in June 2020. It is the first major release after the Drupal community switched to the semantic versioning model. It is a successful proof for Drupal site owners and maintainers that new major versions are no longer a headache.
Drupal 9 comes with many new features that help all kinds of use cases a WebCMS needs to handle. Once you are in Drupal 9, you are in a strong base that will help your digital transformation initiatives in the long run. The strategic roadmap set for Drupal 9 is futuristic and you will see more and more features added to the Drupal core every 6 months as part of the innovation-driven semantic versioning.
Drupal 10
The expected release date for Drupal 10 is 14th December 2022. The new features include
- Olivero default theme that is replacing Bartik, (D7upgrade.org uses Olivero)
- Claro administration theme which will replace Seven,
- CKEditor 5 which will offer a better authoring experience and more modern editing,
- Modern JavaScript components to replace some uses of jQuery,
- Symfony 6 which will replace Symfony 4 and PHP 8.1,
and so much more.
Why upgrade to Drupal 9?
You will not go wrong with an upgrade to the most popular Drupal version on earth today.
With Drupal 9, you instantly win with the web’s most key imperatives.
- Accessibility
- Performance
- Security
Accessibility
- Mobile-first UI utility with Drupal 9 upgrade.
- Easy to manage reusable media in the media library.
- Interoperable with enterprise applications with API’s
Performance
- Updated twig theme engine with Drupal 9 upgrade.
- Decoupled architecture for segregated experiences.
- Backward compatible for clutter-free platforms on Drupal 9
Security
- Peer-reviewed code for greater security and accountability.
- Built-in support for multilingual websites.
- Framework designed to overcome OWASP’s top 10 web application security risks.
Drupal migration assessment - What will it take?
Understand the effort it will take to upgrade Drupal 7 to a higher version with this FREE Drupal migration evaluation module.
FREE Drupal migration evaluation module
