Drupal 7 Upgrade to Drupal 8
Take advantage of the latest features within Drupal 8 by upgrading your existing Drupal 7 site. Look forward to in-line editing, improved multi-lingual capability, optimised mobile experience and more.
When was Drupal 8 released?
Drupal 8 was released on 19 November 2015.
Is it worth upgrading to Drupal 8?
Drupal 8 is now at version 8.9.X and is going to be supported until November 2021. Use this version for Drupal 8 sites with modules that are not Drupal-9-ready, or there is some other restricting factor. Ensure that you plan to update to Drupal 9 soon however. If you are on Drupal 7 still, then it is perfectly reasonable to upgrade to Drupal 8 first, then plan a routine upgrade to Drupal 9 later.
Drupal 9 is essentially the same as the last Drupal 8 point release (minus deprecated code). What this means is that there is no architectural refactoring necessary for moving from Drupal 8 to Drupal 9, thus making a core version upgrade between the versions a much simpler process.
We would expect to build any new projects that we are involved with using Drupal 9.
Is it a big job to upgrade to Drupal 8?
It depends. The upgrade process is much more straightforward than the upgrade process from Drupal 6 to 7, but still comes with its own challenges.
What makes Drupal 8 so special?
- Improved mobile support: You'll notice this most on the Drupal administration pages.
- Better multi-lingual support: D7 was better than D6 at handling multiple languages, but D8 takes it to the next level.
- Configuration Management: A better process for capturing the Drupal config.
- Accessibility / HTML5 / Twig: Overhaul of the front-end technologies to improve accessibility and the theming layer.
- More functional core: With more options for structuring data and rendering content.
- Usage of external libraries: That make Drupal even more powerful and flexible.
- Drupal 8 can use BigPipe technology which can result in much quicker page renderings. For uncached pages, this will yield an improved visitor experience.
How long will Drupal 8 be around for?
Drupal 8 is going to be supported until November 2021, but given the straightforward, routine upgrade path to Drupal 9, this will give any platforms launched on Drupal 8 a significant lifespan.
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Drupal 8 is now at version 8.9.X and is going to be supported until November 2021. Use this version for Drupal 8 sites with modules that are not Drupal-9-ready. Ensure that you plan to update to Drupal 9 soon however.