Change is the only constant and yet what one fears the most is change. But it is rightly said about change - “Don’t be afraid of change. You may lose something good, but you may gain something better.” We’ll like to say the same about the fear you hold for changing the current version of your Drupal 6/7 site to Drupal 8. Well, we also know that its more of a confusion than the fear of change, since you’re stuck between the two thoughts - whether to upgrade now to Drupal 8 or wait for Drupal 9. What if we say, we offer you a solution that will hit both the birds with one stone?
We have been an active Drupal developmentcommunity member since the past 6+ years, 7+ Drupal projects supported, 5000+ successfully delivered international projects and 500+ international Drupal projects - out of which 100+ projects are of Drupal Migration. And hence, we can help you in migrating your current Drupal 6/7 site to Drupal 8 and that too in a way that you will not have to spend a single penny for migrating to Drupal 9 in future. There’s a bunch of rational reasons to back this statement and offer of ours, which we’ll like to share with you:
Change in Drupal Philosophy
Previously, every Drupal upgrade was considered to be tedious and more of a technical task as compared to its counterpart CMS platforms. This is because Drupal 8 was created with a philosophy of bridging the gap between the technical developer and a layman-like admin. And taking this philosophy of positive change, Drupal 9 is going to bridge the gap of upgrade issue by introducing compatibility between its older and newer version - making the entire process effortless and inexpensive.
Upgrade-based Modules
The compatibility between the older and newer version of Drupal majorly depended upon the modules and themes used while building the older version. Until and unless these modules and themes aren’t upgraded, the migration was a time-taking task and tedious task that required technical assistance. This has been changed with the change in the upgrade path of the content, which makes the migration easier if prepared.
Drupal Core Deprecating Policy
Drupal 8 capable of introducing new APIs and features against the old ones. And once these new ones are launched, the old ones automatically get deprecated. Though these old APIs cannot be removed in the minor release of Drupal 8, it will be removed in the next major version of Drupal 9. Hence, if you migrate to Drupal 8 now, the migration to Drupal 9 can easily be done with just a handful of changes to make it compatible.
Looking at the above three major reasons, it must be clear to you that migrating to Drupal 9 from Drupal 8 is far easier as compared to the migration from Drupal 6/7 to Drupal 9. Dries Buytaert, the founder of Drupal, has also shared similar information about planning to be done for Drupal 9. According to him, Drupal 9 is basically built in Drupal 8 instead of a different codebase, altogether. This implies that the new features are added as backward-compatible code and experimental features, which means once the code is stable the old functionality will be deprecated.
Dries, in his blog on ‘Plan for Drupal 9’, has quoted contributed module authors as one of the core reasons behind the easy migration from Drupal 8 to Drupal 9. On this, he says that these are the module authors are already well-equipped with the upcoming technologies of Drupal 9 and hence they can priorly work in a manner that is Drupal 9 compatible. AddWeb, being one of these contributing members of the community, can assure you of the easy and inexpensive migration to Drupal 9 as and when it arrives.
Why Vouch for Drupal 9?
Now, after grasping all the above information regarding the upcoming major release of Drupal 9, you must be wondering what’s in Drupal 9 to vouch for. Let us throw some light on the same, to be able to bring some clarity for you. Drupal 9 is all about eliminating the use of deprecated modules and APIs. Drupal 8, which runs on the dependency of Symfony 3, will run out from the market by November 2021. And hence, it is highly advisable to upgrade and avail the benefits of all that’s latest!
Also read an amazing step to step gyide on - Druapl 9 features to know more about Drupal 9.
Top comments (1)
It's still virtually impossible to use D8 in an entirely OO manner. Everything's held together by little D7 hacks. I mean, it's not as bad as it was a couple of years ago, but it's still pretty bad.
I watched the video where the D9 upgrade got pitched as being the same as the last minor D8 version, and that it'd be straightforward as long as you only used supported modules, etc. It seemed reasonable - at least as reasonable as any Drupalism - but I think it's going to be a lot harder than people are making out, unless D9 doesn't really deprecate as much as they're implying.