One of the great advantages of the changes brought about by Drupal 8 and continuing on into the future of Drupal 9 and beyond is the predictable and frequent release schedule. There’s a new admin theme and a new frontend theme with better accessibility support. What are some advantages or new features of Drupal 9? You have more runway with the extended support window, but you should be starting the process sooner rather than later. Even with that support, it’s a significant effort. You can transition from Drupal 7 directly to Drupal 9, and Drupal 9’s core migrate module contains support for that transition. This was done in recognition that a majority of all Drupal sites are still relying on Drupal 7 and will require security support throughout the extended transition period. Most of the time these updates are minor.įinally, you may have certain considerations to take into account based on your hosting environment - you may find that you’ll need to update some core technologies such as the PHP version, your database, and search platforms.ĭoes this have implications for sites built on Drupal 7?ĭrupal 7’s support window was extended until November 1, 2023. There are API changes and code deprecations that will need to be updated in your project.

Consider contributing to the project to update the module, or otherwise find an alternative compatible module.Īnother issue to consider is the state of custom code in your project. If your project is dependent on modules that have not been made compatible, it will be a bit more challenging. Most widely-used modules have been made compatible with 9. First off, the state of whatever modules you’re using for your projects. However, there are a few things to consider. This transition is much easier than the transition from 7 to 9, for example, more akin to a minor version update of Drupal 8. If you're up-to-date on Drupal 8, transitioning from 8 to 9 should be easy. Will the transition to Drupal 9 be challenging to implement? The biggest impact will be that security updates will cease. Sites built on Drupal 8 will be moving outside the support window as of November 2nd. What does this mean for sites built on Drupal 8? As Symfony deprecates portions of its API, Drupal in turn needs to keep pace. In Drupal 9, that dependency was updated to Symfony 4. Drupal 8 is dependent on Symfony 3, and support for Symfony 3 ends in November. The primary reason for this sunsetting has to do with Drupal’s dependency on the Symfony application framework. We caught up with Senior Developer Joe Cardella, to talk about what this means for sites built on Drupal 8, what to expect with upgrading your site to Drupal 9, and a few of the advantages of this latest Drupal version. Drupal 8 reaches its end of life today, November 2, 2021.

Drupal 7and extend