How to survive Drupal 7 and 8 end of life?

With Drupal 7 and 8 reaching the end of their lives and Drupal 9 all set to release their new versions- the crucial question that pops up in our mind is whether you should wait or upgrade to Drupal 9?

Instead of pondering over the reasons as to why upgrade to Drupal 9, organizations must start figuring out their approach towards Drupal 9.

Let’s dive into more details and understand how to survive the Drupal 7 and 8 end-of-life.

Drupal 9: Reasons to migrate:

With Drupal 7’s end-of-life, Drupal’s official team will not extend any support. In simple terms, contributed modules and themes won’t get any maintenance apart from exposed security loopholes, affecting the recantation of the downloadable release of the projects.

Drupal 7 and 8 end-of-life:

End-of-life means the Drupal team officially withdraws the support for older versions. With the launch of Drupal 9 in the last year and Drupal 10 set to schedule for release in June 2022, end-of-life is quickly approaching Drupal 7 and 8.

One might get a mini shock as Drupal 8’s end-of-life will occur before Drupal 7. In most cases, the transition from Drupal 8 to 9 is insignificant. Another reason is Drupal 8 majorly depends on Symfony 3. Symfony 3’s end-of-life was on November 2021.

How will organizations get impacted?

Drupal is one of the large content management systems with open-source and robust security models.

• Drupal has a dedicated team of security professionals that review core and contributed vulnerabilities.
• After identifying the possible issues, the Drupal team gets notified and quickly fixes the code.
• After code fixing and announcing, a patch gets released to the community.
• Drupal sites get an automatic notification that they need to upgrade.

With Drupal 7 and 8 end-of-life, there won’t be support from the Drupal team, even for critical security issues. The contributed modules won’t get reviewed and tested.

So, what do you need to do next?

Without taking active steps to protect your websites, you are vulnerable to a security breach. Hackers and hacking groups are waiting for the official support to end. They can use security exploits to access the websites.

We advise our partners and clients to follow these steps:

• To ensure continuous security support, one can develop an internal plan to monitor future Drupal 7 and 8 security releases.
• It is time for reassessment on using the web if you are still on Drupal 7 and 8.
• Take the help of an expert development company like Infozion technologies. We will help to reassess the website plans and determine an effective digital strategy.
• After identification of secured platforms, plan and execute the migration process.

Upgrading to Drupal 9 is more than just security:

Drupal 9 has out-of-the-box features that allow you to build modern digital experiences.

We can say Drupal 9 is a box of innovation.

Best of Drupal 8:

Drupal 8 has improved authoring experience with Layout builder, Twig templating engine, and build-in web integrations. All these features are carried forward to Drupal 9.

Automatic tools:

Ease of use is Drupal’s topmost priority. New front-end themes and automatic updates are among the intuitive tools of Drupal 9.

Future upgrades:

Upgrades on Drupal 9 are automatic, and one need not platform as new versions get released.

Prepare for an upgrade of Drupal 9:

The upgrade comes with difficulties. As you prepare for Drupal 9’s upgrade, prefer the best development agency such as Infozion technologies for a steady migration path to Drupal 9.