(Don’t) migrate to Drupal 9 now
“Don’t risk! ”, “Why do we need to stay on Drupal 8 if my competitor has migrated to Drupal 9?”, ”Everything is cool, but let’s do it as usual” — If you hear these phrases, it means that you are not on the same page with your client. If your customers hasten to migrate to Drupal 9, we will tell them that this is not a good idea.
Are you ready? Drupal 9 is here!
Firstly, let us persuade you. To begin with, the update will be the easiest than ever before. To illustrate this point, imagine that your site is a train. Earlier, moving between the basic versions implied moving the train to a completely different path. As for Drupal 9, the main versions will be simply stations on one road. Let’s migrate to Drupal 9 as soon as possible then! — you say. We share this enthusiasm but we advise our clients to wait a bit.
How frequently is Drupal updated?
When it comes to the past upgrades, waiting for contributed modules to be ready for the new Drupal version took months of wait.
Let’s look at the example of Drupal 8. Between Drupal 8.7.0 and Drupal 8.8.0, there were 14 patches and security releases in half a year! As we can see, the latest version of Drupal 8.7 is 8.7.14. Look how many fixes have been made during this interval between minor releases.
Take your time with the decision
As we said earlier, upgrading from Drupal 8 to Drupal 9 is such a minor effort compared to prior versions. Therefore, it was decided not to offer an extended support program for Drupal 8 like it was done for Drupal 6. Support for Drupal 8 will continue through November 2021 for sites upgraded to 8.9.x, but support for that version ends when that Drupal 8 end-of-life date arrives.
So, the security support ends:
- for Drupal 8.7.x dated June 3, 2020,
- for Drupal 8.8.x dated December 2, 2020
- for Drupal on 8.9.x dated November 2021
What do you think happens between three minor releases?
We strongly encourage you to give Drupal 9.0 some time and don’t migrate current projects to Drupal 9.0 right after the release in June. Drupal 8.9 is literally the same thing with Drupal 9.0. We, therefore, call on you to stay on this version for a while. In 6 months, the Drupal community will provide an enormous amount of feedback and cover many bugs and issues. Did we manage to convince you?
What owners of Drupal 7 and Drupal 8 websites should do?
So, are you with us? Our company will help with a smooth migration to Drupal 9. These decisions will help you to not make mistakes and save your money. We created for us 3 different solutions for 3 different use cases:
- For Drupal 7 website owners (migrate to Drupal 8 to be able to upgrade to Drupal 9 when the time has come);
- For Drupal 8 website owners (Drupal 9 compatibility check: prepare your modules for Drupal 9 in 5 easy steps);
- For new projects (start a project on Drupal 8.9 from scratch with us — your dedicated team of Drupal developers).
Below, we have prepared useful resources for those who have (not) been updated on the topic:
Questions? Email hello@adcillc.com or tweet ADCI Solutions
