Why should I upgrade from Drupal 7?
Planning for the future
One life remaining 🩶🩶🩶🩶❤️
EOL was announced. And then extended. And then re-extended. And then further re-extended.
The final date was decided ... and still, thousands of sites weren't ready
LTS support has been offered by a number of platforms, and that has given D7 one final extra life (for an additional subscription cost).
For some yet-unknown timescale of months or years, site owners can breathe a little easier.
It's time to make a plan
Having built with it for its entire lifetime, and worked with all the versions since, we have a clear (and certainly not unique) perspective.
We've built many sites on Drupal 7, and will continue to support D7 sites for clients old and new (with an LTS plan in place).
But there's no denying - the sun is setting, and there are still a lot of people to get off the boat.
Warning
Blockers and concerns
Paid LTS
We strongly endorse that D7 site owners not able to go through an upgrade immediately should take up a paid long term service agreement.
A number of providers have stepped up to the plate with an LTS offering for D7. This has been a crucial lifeline for many, allowing continuation for a few years longer. Ultimately, though, nobody knows at this time how long the LTS services will continue for. While there surely will be a decent notice period, few will enjoy being under time pressure again.
We would recommend getting an LTS plan in place, then starting a plan for moving away from D7 on a 1-2 year timescale.
Cost!
Projects that involve the whole website can be daunting. It could take a lot of time, effort, coordination and cost to rebuild - and you may well have concerns about how the ROI will pay off.
Ultimately, it's up to you to decide how much investment you want to put into the project - and there are options.
- A quick rebuild of the essentials with a minimal data migration could get you an MVP to continue business with. Stripping back can be a good thing.
- A medium effort rebuild with a full data migration keeps the site running almost as-is, but on the new platform.
- A higher investment full site refresh, with a design overhaul and branding update, carefully reviewed user journeys and attention to detail.
You don't have the skills
If your team doesn't have the experience or skills to push through your site upgrade, that can leave you in an awkward position. We have the flexibility to consider working alongside your existing team on your upgrade project, and are happy to deliver training along the way.
Unsure of the benefits
Most D7 site owners have read hundreds of articles by now. So if you're still not convinced, there's only so much we can do!
Further down the page we've outlined a number of the key benefits that we've seen in our clients and their sites, having followed their journeys from Drupal 7 through to current Drupal.
Case Study: EDF Energy
Key benefits of upgrading
Several years have passed since the D8 release, and over that time we've seen the genuine benefits for our clients and their sites.
We hope this is a good summary.
Opportunity to reimagine your site
Full site rebuilds don't (or shouldn't!) happen regularly. Your upgrade to latest Drupal is your chance to review everything about your customer journey, online offering and editorial experience.
Rebuild what matters
There's no point in rebuilding functionality that nobody uses. Our pragmatic design and build process can help you challenge perspectives, obtain real usage data where needed, and make the hard decisions on which pages, flows, interactions and forms are truly needed.
Rebuild better
Where possible, take the time to review and refresh the functionality that you do choose to take forward to the new site. There may well be important improvements in design, UX, accessibility or web standards.
Our developers can cut out old unused code, reducing site complexity and exposure to mistakes, bad practise, wasted resources.
Rebuild on-trend
Is this a good time to rebrand? Or refresh your website's look and feel? Use our in-house design team or recruit a marketing agency to get your site looking sharp.
Continued platform security and advancement
Working with a supported platform means you not only have security coverage, but all the developments and advancements made for years to come. Modern Drupal's regular release cycle brings out key features and improvements throughout the year, and in a controlled manner that allows time for testing and refinement before sites get left behind.
Improved extensibility
The whole point of Drupal 8 was to move to a more modern and mature code architecture, which intrinsically allows better opportunities for making deep customisations. Looking at the growth of the community module ecosystem, that shift is paying off immensely. We're seeing faster development throughout the site build process, and faster delivery for our clients.
Future-proofing
Once you reach current Drupal, you're future proof.
Drupal 8's new architecture took almost all site configuration, fields and metadata and put them into structured formats, which allows the system to understand and manage its configuration - and should mean that a site rebuild of this magnitude is never again required. Even major future changes should be able to take advantage of the structured site configuration and be able to automate the update process.
Improved content creation experience
There are now a huge variety of different ways to build content - with wysiwygs, direct inline editing, paragraphs, blocks and layouts all contributing to a wealth of options for your editorial experience. A strong data structure and carefully planned editorial experience can make a world of difference. We love hearing that our clients enjoy working with their sites and feel effective with their tools and workflows.
Media Library
A keystone feature for Drupal 8, the Media Library goes several levels up on D7's image and file storage, bringing a decent library, search, tagging and custom fielding. Many sites may be able to avoid setting up a DAM (Digital Asset Manager) altogether, and Drupal's AI support may help with a variety of time consuming tasks.
REST endpoints
Like many SaaS products and competing CMS, Drupal has native support for exposing data via REST APIs
Go headless
Keep your existing React or Vue developers busy, and go headless with a Drupal backend as your CMS. It's more than ready.
Expose and export your data
Build web apps, processes, products, workflows... the world's your oyster.
Support my site
See our dedicated page, where we discuss in further detail your LTS options and how we can help
Upgrade my site
Our article that runs through the overall upgrade process for a D7 site
