October 04, 2024
Drupal 7 has been a very stable and popular content management system for more than a decade, running millions of websites since its introduction in early 2011. However, with continuous improvements in technology and on the web, the demand for even more advanced platforms evolves. It is now scheduled that Drupal 7 will reach its official end of life on January 5, 2025, which means that support, security updates, and bug fixes will no longer be provided for this version. This becomes a very critical decision for any organization on Drupal 7 as time runs out: whether to upgrade to Drupal 10 or to stay with NES.
In this blog, we will explore each option deeply to help you to evaluate the pros and cons in detail, so that you make an informed decision based on the needs of your organization.
By January 2025, the official Drupal community will no longer provide updates, security patches, or support for Drupal 7. This will be in the last phase of its lifecycle, and continuing a website on Drupal 7 beyond this time will come with several key risks:
Without regular updates, the sites running on Drupal 7 will highly be vulnerable to security threats such as malware, hacking, and data breaches.
Many newer web technologies and third-party applications may not be seamlessly integrated with Drupal 7 anymore, thus limiting the functionality of a website.
As more and more developers migrate to newer versions of Drupal, finding help and resources will be ever more difficult for Drupal 7, and organizations will get left behind.
These risks make migration to a supported platform important for the security, functionality, and future of your website.
Migration into Drupal 10 presents huge advantages for any organization ready to upgrade its digital infrastructure. Here are reasons why upgrading to the latest could be a game-changing strategy for your business:
With Drupal 10 being the latest version, security updates are pretty frequent, adding an extra layer of protection for your website against cyber threats courtesy of active community support. Plus, such a migration reduces the chances of data breaches and vulnerabilities you would have otherwise been concerned about with Drupal 7.
Drupal 10 offers a variety of performance enhancements, including better caching mechanisms and quick loading of pages. It leads to a more efficient website for better user experience and also optimizes performance for search engines.
Drupal 10 comes with many features that make it feel very modern, including a new and intuitive administration interface and enhanced content editing experiences. It is based on modern technologies, including Symfony 6 and PHP 8.1. These updates give your website the capability to evolve with flexibility, meeting user demands and business needs with ease.
Drupal 10 offers long-term support and keeps your website updated with the latest technologies, ensuring it stays relevant. Migrating to Drupal 10 grants access to new features, modules, and integrations.
Since most of the community is now focused on Drupal 10, that means most new modules and themes are in active development for it. Migrate will enable you to tap into a growing ecosystem that will enrich your website with powerful functionality and design capabilities.
While a migration to Drupal 10 is usually the best solution long-term, several organizations are finding it difficult to make this transition immediately. An interim solution does exist for such cases: Never Ending Support stretches the life of Drupal 7 beyond its original End of Life (EOL) date. NES itself is provided by third-party vendors who provide support services for older (and even obsolete) systems extending their usability well beyond EOL. Here is what NES can offer:
NES providers offer customised security patches and fixes for Drupal 7 to safeguard your site against all known vulnerabilities. This becomes quite important for those organizations which are not ready to migrate but need to keep sensitive data safe and maintain operational integrity.
Wherever there are shoestring budgets or highly complex site structures, NES can be more cost-effective in the short term. You won't have to bear the upfront migration cost, but at the same time, your site's security and functionality will be guaranteed.
NES allows your organization to operate on Drupal 7 without major disruptions. This becomes really handy for organizations that have very large or complex websites, and in fact, those systems whose custom build from scratch may take more time to migrate.
NES will buy you time to actually plan and execute a migration to Drupal 10 with thoroughness. Whether your organization needs to approach a phase-in or is still securing resources for migration, NES gives you breathing room while still keeping your site secure.
The decision to migrate to Drupal 10 is not one-size-fits-all when you compare it with opting for NES. At the very least, your budget, timeline, and long-term business goals should dictate your decisions.
Migration to Drupal 10 requires an upfront higher investment in both time and money. However, it can be well justified by the advantage of having a modern, secure, and high-performing site in the long run.
In general, NES is a less expensive solution for the short term, allowing you to delay migration at least for some time while keeping your site operational and secure.
Migration ensures continuous security updates right from the community of Drupal, which keeps your website always protected against new kinds of vulnerabilities and threats.
It receives custom security patches from third-party vendors. However, the more obsolete Drupal 7 becomes, the greater these risks, while the security might not be that robust or timely as in Drupal 10.
The migration to Drupal 10 will give you access to modern features and innovations, such as a significantly enhanced experience in content editing, compatibility with Symfony 6, and the latest web technologies. Therefore, your site is positioned for further growth and compatibility with more modern modules and new tools.
NES will keep your Drupal 7 site up and functional but will not provide new features, themes, or modules that are in development for newer versions. Your site may grow limited with regard to functionality over time.
Migration is future-proof; upgrade your website to Drupal 10 so that it can continue to remain viable and scale with the passage of time, ever-evolving to adjust to market trends and changing technologies.
NES offers a reliable interim solution that keeps your Drupal 7 site up-to-date and secure. While it extends the platform's lifespan, businesses should eventually consider migrating to a more modern platform like Drupal 10 to ensure long-term competitiveness and security in an evolving digital landscape.
Drupal 10 ensures continued support by active communities with substantial pools of developers and other resources for bug fixing, updating, and feature enhancements. Long-term maintenance is effective and smooth.
NES requires reliance on third-party vendors for system maintenance, which may be very inconsistent depending on the service provider. With time, it could be much hard to seek all-rounded support for an obsolete Drupal 7 system.
Drupal 10 performance is optimized, the load times are faster, the cache works better, and responsiveness is improved. All these culminate in better user experience and better search engine rankings.
NES will keep your site up and running but overtime your Drupal 7 site may lag behind others who upgraded in every sense - performance-wise and overall usability.
Of course, it may take some time to migrate your current Drupal 7 site, depending on the complexity. The larger the sites with custom code and plenty of modules are, the greater the involvement in detailed planning and execution, and hence it takes longer. But in the end, it results in a modern, efficient site.
NES allows you to delay migration, which can give your team the time they need to correctly plan and budget for the eventual switch. This flexibility greatly reduces stress if more time is required to prepare for a full upgrade.
If you want to move over to Drupal 10, then you will have to plan this very carefully to ensure an easy migration. Here's a step-by-step process:
Audit your current Drupal 7 site. Note down all the modules and custom code in use, along with any integrations. This gives you a fair idea of what needs to be migrated, upgraded, or replaced on Drupal 10.
Draw up a roadmap for migration, indicating the major stages to be followed and a timeline and resources needed for such. This will involve content migration, updating the modules, and testing periods.
Use Drupal's built-in migration tools and other control modules, such as the Migrate API, to automate part of the transition. These tools will ease the entire process and help maintain data integrity.
Thorough testing of your migrated site before it goes live: test that all elements work as expected and perform at their best.
Your team will very likely need training on the new features and tools that come with Drupal 10. Position your staff to manage and optimize the platform post-migration.
Since Drupal 7 will reach its EOL in January 2025, organizations can either upgrade to Drupal 10 or choose Never Ending Support. It is in migration that security, performance, and flexibility can be obtained for a long time, hence keeping it future-proof. NES acts as the safety net that provides further but temporary support for those kinds of organizations not prepared yet for this change.
Ultimately, this will be a question of need, budget, and resources for your organization. While NES may give you some extra breathing room, the absolute best thing to keep your site secure, functional, and future-proof is migrating over to Drupal 10.
If currently confused as to which path you should go down, Drupal experts can help you describe the best avenue for your organization.
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