A few days out from the release of Drupal 10, slated for 14 December 2022, it’s a good time to take a quick look at Drupal’s overall roadmap. If you have Drupal 7 (yes, many websites are still built on this obsolete version of the CMS), Drupal 8 or Drupal 9, what strategy should you adopt and what measures will you need to take, depending on the version used by your website or site factory? We’ll take a look at different scenarios, going from the simplest to the most complex, the most contained to the most urgent.
If your digital platform is powered by Drupal 9
This is obviously the best set-up, so your move to Drupal 10 can wait until the first few months of 2023. Community support for Drupal 9 will be provided through the end of 2023, and the upgrade to Drupal 10 should be relatively simple, similar to what you may have experienced if you previously migrated from Drupal 8 to Drupal 9. The tools and processes are the same as for the last version upgrade. However, depending on the architecture set up in Drupal 9 (choice of modules, custom developments, etc.), your upgrade may demand more or less adaptation work (ranging from a few hours to a few days), although it will still not entail a complete overhaul like what was necessary between D7 and D8.
If your website is built on Drupal 8
As a reminder, Drupal 8 support stopped in late 2021, coinciding with the end of long-term support for Symfony 3. In this situation, you should consider switching to Drupal 9 in the very near future, if not Drupal 10 once it is available. A little more work will undoubtedly be required to upgrade from D8 to D10 than from D9 to D10. But although fast action is needed, this will not necessarily have to be an overhaul: it will be more of a major update to protect your platform’s security.
If your digital platform still uses Drupal 7, it’s time to envisage an overhaul
Although the pandemic led the Drupal community to push back this version’s end-of-life date, first to November 2022 and then to 1 November 2023, it has now become urgent for organisations still working with Drupal 7 to make plans to overhaul their websites. The technological leaps made between D7 and D9 (and soon D10) rule out a “simple” version upgrade and instead demand a technical rebuild of your platform, which may also mean a graphic and functional rebuild.
Why should you make the switch to Drupal 10?
Aside from the effort required to make the move to Drupal 10, what technical and functional reasons are there for upgrading to the new version?
Drupal 10 is a more sophisticated version of Drupal 9. From a security perspective, Drupal follows Symfony’s roadmap. These two technologies have become intricately entwined ever since the use of Symfony components in the Drupal 8.0 overhaul. Drupal 10 marks a move from Symfony 4 to Symfony 6. In other words, for the security of your platform, your environment will need to switch to PHP 8.1.
In addition to security, Drupal 10 will feature the starterkit theme, a tool for generating new themes (your website’s HTML/CSS graphic layer) that should simplify your front-end developers’ work while following Drupal’s best practices. The default themes, Seven and Bartik (for administration and the front end respectively), are being replaced by Claro and Olivero (which was already available in D9.1). Drupal 10 also replaces certain uses of jQuery with modern JavaScript components.
Lastly, your editorial staff will be interested in the implementation of CKEditor 5, a well-known WYSIWYG rich text editor, whose version 5 offers a new user experience that simplifies content creation.
Smile is here to guide your move to Drupal 10
Smile’s Drupal experts are at your disposal to carry out an analysis of your platform. Based on our review of your Drupal technical architecture, we will recommend the best upgrade path for your situation and your configuration (module updates, migration, overhaul, etc.).
After this audit of your Drupal website, we can handle all of the technical actions required for your switch to Drupal 10. We are committed to making your upgrade to Drupal 10 a state-of-the-art operation that updates and secures your platform while adhering as closely as possible to Drupal’s best practices.
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