Now’s the time to plan your migration to Drupal 10

If you’ve fallen behind in migrating your site from Drupal 7, you’re not alone. According to the Drupal community, more than 350,000 projects still use that version of the platform as of November 2023 — one-quarter of all Drupal sites.

As a result, you aren’t just facing a hard deadline to relaunch your new site as January 2025 grows closer. You’re also competing with a vast number of organizations just like yours who need to coordinate the same migration with a web development agency partner. Given that it takes an average of six months to complete the sales process to get started on a Drupal 7 migration, you’re already at risk of missing the deadline if you have not yet contacted an agency.

The longer you wait, the less likely you are to find a team with availability to work with you on a migration plan and website redesign before Drupal 7 reaches end-of-life. And, given the stakes involved, your organization can’t afford the risks of sticking on a platform without the vital benefits of ongoing support.

What your organization loses when Drupal 7 reaches end-of-life

Drupal 7 will reach its end of life 14 years after its initial release. If you’re still on the platform, your website will remain accessible after January 5, 2025. However, it will no longer receive feature updates, bug fixes, or security releases from the Drupal community.

This last detail is most critical to your organization. Any security issues discovered after January 2025 may be publicly disclosed, but Drupal will no longer provide any necessary updates. Prior to the announcement of this final extension for Drupal 7, your organization had the option of paying for extended support. But that is no longer the case.

When you work with the right agency partner, you can create a migration plan that will keep your website secure. Fortunately, your organization will be able to better manage ‌site security after the migration is complete. But that’s just one of the advantages made possible by getting your organization started with Drupal 10.

Trusting your site with the legacy code of Drupal 7 doesn’t just expose your organization to poor security. It prevents you from taking advantage of dramatic improvements for your site’s users and content editors.

Improved website speed and SEO performance

Fundamentally, your Drupal 10 website will run faster. Dynamic caching reduces page load times by invalidating only the content that has changed. Instead of needing to reload your entire page after a set amount of time, your cache can just reload the block with new information.

Drupal 10 also marks the end of Drupal 7’s jQuery. A large JavaScript library, jQuery was a powerful tool, but modern browsers perform many of the same functions. The up-to-date JavaScript used by Drupal 10 also decreases page load times.

Drupal 10 also supports new formats such as schema.org, Open Graph, and JSON-LD, which increase conversions from search engines. Plus, Drupal 10 supports advanced accessibility features that improve WCAG compliance and further improve SEO rankings.

Better site security and reduced maintenance costs

Drupal 10 improves your site security by including up-to-date protocols and dependencies such as PHP 8, Symfony 6, and CKEditor 5. As earlier versions of these dependencies reach end-of-life, they may be exposed to unpatched security vulnerabilities. Migrating to Drupal 10 avoids delays in getting critical security patches applied to your site.

One of Drupal’s major advantages as an open-source platform is the community’s Security Team, which delivers security advisories and provides guidance to contributed module maintainers on how to resolve potential vulnerabilities. Providing continued support from the community Security Team for all of your site’s contributed modules beyond the upgrade deadline is critical.

Improved content editing experience and efficiency

Drupal’s out-of-the-box CMS experience has always been limited. With Drupal 10, your site editors benefit from the Claro theme, which makes Drupal much easier to use. New image tools and an updated media library also enable better organization of your site’s assets.

Drupal 10 also includes the JavaScript text editor CKEditor 5, which further simplifies content creation and its accessibility. In addition, the platform offers enhanced translation capabilities in multiple languages, which enables your organization to reach a wider audience than ever.

Upgrading your site from Drupal 7 to Drupal 10 isn’t quick or easy. That’s why so many organizations like yours have been putting off the migration. But the sooner you start preparing your site for the future, the sooner you can take advantage of all Drupal 10 has to offer.

Better still, you gain the added peace of mind knowing your site won’t be exposed to critical vulnerabilities. And you don’t have to start planning on your own. With the right team of Drupal experts, you can make a plan to ensure your site remains stable and secure moving forward.

If this sounds like a plan that will help your organization move forward, we should talk.