Like many Blue Water clients, your site is up and running on Drupal 7. But you’re probably starting to hear about Drupal 8. Or even Drupal 9. Released two years ago, Drupal 8 introduced a series of upgrades that fundamentally improved on the Drupal 7 platform. Drupal 9 will be released in 2020, and both Drupal 7 and Drupal 8 will reach end of life in 2021. While the 7 → 8 migration process has some complexity, the good news is that Drupal 9 is built directly from the Drupal 8 codebase. For Drupal site owners, this means that the move from D8 → D9 will be easy. How easy? In terms of relative complexity, it will be similar to an 8.1 → 8.2 migration code update.
2020 and 2021 may sound far off into the future, but the time to start planning for your migration is now. While it might be easy to simply wait for Drupal 9, we recommend starting the Drupal 8 migration process this year so as to have a cushion for the ultimate move to Drupal 9. Drupal 8 is mature and well-supported by the open source community. This means that commonly used modules are available, stable and secure. Importantly, nothing will be lost in the subsequent migration to Drupal 9.
Does your website still accurately reflect your brand?
What is your UX data telling you? Is there an opportunity for improvement?
How is your site performing? Does it help meet your business and organizational goals?
Is it time to consider how you can drive more traffic to your website?
It's D-day for a Drupal upgrade.
Don’t get caught behind the curve – the time to start planning for a migration or redesign is now! Ready to talk Drupal strategy? Click here to schedule a no cost evaluation. Or, for some additional, technical information on Drupal migrations, here and here are some thoughts from our friends at Acquia.
Blue Water is a full-service agency that delivers exceptional online and offline experiences for private and public-sector clients. Leveraging data, we operate at the intersection of experience design, creative, content strategy, technology, and marketing, which we call our Digital Convergence Model (DCM), and work in small, cross-functional teams with clients as our partners and users as our focus. This forms the foundation of our approach to turning digital challenges into endless possibilities.