Why migrate to Drupal 9 now
With the release of Drupal 9.0 and 9.1 earlier this year and the announcement that Drupal 10 is planned for 2022 — we clearly understand that it can’t go back to how it was. You can choose Drupal 9 to attain all the latest security updates and wholesome functionality. Are you ready to move to a brighter future?
Drupal 9 readiness
This year, Drupal 9 was released and those who love cutting-edge technology wriggled on their seats — c’mon! Let’s migrate to Drupal 9 as soon as possible! Earlier, we advised our clients to wait a bit until a new minor version is live and the major issues are fixed. But now we are ready to engage in dialogue with you.
You can’t afford to do anything. If you’re thinking about migrating to Drupal 9, you’ve probably heard rumors and myths regarding migrations. Let clear those up. Here are myths about migration that need to be squashed:
- the difficulty of migration;
To begin with, the update will be easier 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.
- investing in a redesign;
It requires significantly more budget, planning, and time. But, it’s a great time to redesign from an SEO perspective (more on this later).
- losing SEO;
A better-optimized site will benefit SEO in the longer term.
Here’s a secret: migration can help your page rank. Google has to recrawl your website, recognize that it’s you, and give you back your ranking. Migration can help you build a more powerful SEO framework.
- losing all data when migrating.
We understand you but it can be easily resolved by taking the proper steps. In other words, successful migrations keep data and content intact by definition.
The Drupal 9 release cycle
Let’s check some figures and address the Drupal core release cycle. The important dates are:
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
For example, there were 14 patch and security releases between Drupal 8.7.0 and 8.8.0. As we see, the latest release of Drupal 8.7 is 8.7.14! Look how many fixes were made during this gap between minor releases.
Other releases were announced as:
- for Drupal 9.1 in December 2020
- for Drupal 9.2 in June 2021
- for Drupal 9.3 in December 2021
Drupal 9.1.0 deserves special attention. There are a lot of changes, let’s go through them. From interesting, we can follow on:
- The new themes. The new Olivero theme has been added to the core (in the future it will replace Bartik). Also, many improvements have been made to the Claro admin theme. To begin with, the admin’s visual is repeated from year to year, but the updated themes on Drupal 9 have something new! They have got their own style and modern font.
- By default, enabled native lazy-load for images, including those in the content. This results in a decrease in the loading time of applications (for mobile applications this is more critical) and increases the performance of page/app. In some cases, it is possible to improve SEO.
- Drupal 8.9 and Drupal 9.0 are marked incompatible with PHP 8. With Drupal 7 and 8 versions nearing their end of life, technical support for earlier versions would be difficult. With the latest version, Drupal updates some of the PHP library dependencies to recent versions ensuring long-lasting support. Who needs PHP updates? — read more here.
- Advanced technology for JSON: API preparations are underway to create public APIs. At the moment this is a zero-configuration solution. Also, RESTful web services will also now be in core. Needless to say, site configurations become easier with in-built YAML engines.
We advise you to enjoy the real novelties of the platform which were added in December 2020 with version 9.1. This version will be even more efficient and easier to use. New habits need to be formed. Exciting times are ahead with this new reality.
