Drupal 9 is coming in 2020
End of life of Drupal 7! Drupal 9 is coming in 2020.
Drupal 8 was released in November 2015 - over three years ago. The drastic architectural changes led to a difficult upgrade path for Drupal 7 operators. Recently, Dries Buytaert, Drupal's project lead, announced the planned launch of Drupal 9 in 2020. This signals the end of life of Drupal 7 ...
What does this mean for Drupal 8?
Drupal 8 is based on a concept of continuous innovation. This means that new features and backward-compatible changes are constantly being added. When an old system or code is marked as deprecated and replaced with a newer version, it remains in the codebase instead of being removed. This ensures that custom code and added modules continue to function and that website operators and module maintainers have the time to update their own components. Ultimately, this will result in an increased amount of code and dependencies that will need to be removed. This is one of the reasons for the release of Drupal 9. All the old stuff will then be removed and the project will start again with a clean slate and the newest and best technology available. The upgrade from 8 to 9 is therefore no different from 8.5 to 8.6. And this is a very important point: compared to the previous, very hard version jumps, the upgrade to Drupal 9 will be very relaxed and comparatively effortless. This method of creating and releasing versions will continue for the foreseeable future.
What does this mean for Drupal 7?
Unfortunately, Drupal 7 is a different story. When Drupal 7 reaches its end of life with the release of Drupal 9 in November 2020, it will no longer be maintained by the Drupal community and will not be provided with security updates. There are plans to release a Drupal 7 version that supports the latest version of PHP. A paid support program is also planned that will allow individuals and organizations that cannot or do not want to migrate to continue to protect their websites. However, the best course of action is to plan a migration to Drupal 8 by 2020. This will keep your website up to date and ensure that security continues to advance.
The codebase between 7 and 8 is completely different, so a migration to Drupal 8 is a major undertaking. You could call it "replatforming". Incidentally, Drupal 8 contains an integrated data migration tool, which at least simplifies the transition.
What needs to be revised in any case - because the technical basis is completely new: the website theme, i.e. the design component. Here, the migration should be seen as an opportunity to overhaul the appearance of the website and the user experience and to optimize the speed of the website using the latest software. (Incidentally, loading speed is an important factor for Google and pays off not only for visitors, but also in search engine rankings.)
If you have any questions, we are of course always happy to help and advise you regarding a Drupal upgrade.
Further information can be found, for example, on the blog of Dries Buytaert. Interesting blog articles on the topic include: Plan for Drupal 9 and Drupal 7, 8 and 9.