Whether you’ve been running Drupal 7 on your website since its release or recently made the change, what is your next move? Do you upgrade to Drupal 9 or make the change to something different?
We know how difficult it can be to decide when you’ve found yourself at the crossroads between your current CMS platform and the next. We’re here to help.
Before you decide, find out what’s happening to Drupal 7 below.
Drupal 7 is Approaching its End of Life Dead
The Drupal 7 content management system (CMS) has reached its scheduled end of life. The discontinuation was pushed out to November of 2022 because of the impacts COVID-19 had on businesses.
Here’s what it means for your Drupal 7 site as of November 2021, courtesy of Drupal:
- The community at large will no longer support Drupal 7. The community at large will no longer create new projects, fix bugs in existing projects, write documentation, etc., around Drupal 7.
- There will be no more core commits to Drupal 7.
- The Drupal Security Team will no longer provide support or Security Advisories for Drupal 7 core or contributed modules, themes, or other projects. Reports about Drupal 7 vulnerabilities might become public, creating 0-day exploits.
- All Drupal 7 releases on all project pages will be flagged as unsupported. Maintainers can change that flag if they desire to.
- Drupal Core will appear unsupported on Drupal 7 sites with the update status module.
- After November 2021, using Drupal 7 may be flagged as insecure in 3rd party scans as it no longer gets support.
- A best practice is not to use unsupported software; continuing to build new Drupal 7 sites would not be advisable.
Drupal 8 will still stop receiving support in November of 2021, ahead of the Drupal 7 End of Life date, which means that while you could switch to Drupal 8, the more logical choice is to wait for Drupal 9.1 and make the switch then. Or, you can rethink Drupal entirely and switch your CMS to something different.
Should You Upgrade to Drupal 8 or 9?
According to Drupal, “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.” Instead of upgrading to Drupal 8, it sounds like Drupal 9, or the updated 9.1 version, is the better choice.
However, why stick with Drupal? Whenever you have a technology that’s going away and will require pretty much starting over, it’s a perfect time to step back and take stock of things. Are your web goals the same today as they were when you chose Drupal? One big selling point of Drupal is scalability, but with that scalability comes complexity, which creates a host of other issues.
Is scalability still your top priority, or are you now focused on other things, other places where another CMS like WordPress really shines? There are other CMS platforms available that provide greater flexibility and customization for your business. Would you rather adapt your business to your CMS or adapt your CMS to your business?
Here are some alternatives to Drupal 9:
- WordPress –– Easy to use, open-source, and widely supported with developers and plugins.
- Shopify –– Ideal for e-commerce stores and smaller entrepreneurs or small businesses.
- Webflow –– A more visual content management system that requires basic web design knowledge.
Why the WordPress CMS is the Smarter Decision
If you’re making changes to upgrade your CMS away from Drupal 7, why not decide to re-platform your CMS to WordPress. We’ve been building websites for 20 years, and once we switched to WordPress, we’ve never looked back. Now, we specialize in creating WordPress websites for medium and large businesses.
The WordPress ecosystem of support, plugins, integrations, and developers, including us, means you’ll never be left without someone to lean on if something breaks. It’s also simpler to use, so you won’t need to spend countless hours training your team to make minor changes in the backend. Plus, that large WordPress community means the tool is only getting better.
Now is the Time to Start Your Planning
You’ve found yourself at the crossroads between your next CMS platform. Whether you’ve been running Drupal 7 on your website since its release or recently made the change, what is your next move? Do you upgrade to Drupal 9 or make the change to something different?
We know how difficult it can be to decide when you’ve found yourself at the crossroads between your current platform and the next. We’re here to help.