The end-of-life date for Drupal 7 has been announced in 2019 and Drupal 9 has already replaced Drupal 8. The community rule is to support only two major versions at the same time. But migrating from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 or 9 is more difficult than migrating from Drupal 8 to Drupal 9.
Indeed, the core of Drupal has been radically redesigned for version 8. Knowing that the migration would be more consequent, the Drupal community took the decision to give more time to Drupal 7. Unlike version 8, which will no longer be supported as of November 2, 2021, version 7 will be supported until November 2022.
At that time, the Drupal teams that maintain the software will no longer do. It means that the features of your website will no longer be able to benefit from module updates and the security of your site and your users data will sooner or later be compromised, putting you in breach of the General Data Protection Regulation. Besides, you will no longer benefit from the new developments and features offered by the Open Source community as the developers will mainly focusing on the last two versions (8 and 9).
If you still own a Drupal 7 site, you have several options:
- Deactivate the website
- Keep your website (if it is not dynamic and not updated much) by "freezing" it, by making it static (HTML/CSS). Search functions and contact forms will maybe have to be replaced.
- Create a new site, from scratch
- Take the opportunity to refurbish and redesign your site by upgrading it to Drupal 9
- Chosse a personalised maintenance of your Drupal 7 solution (Drupal Extended Support Vendors), a solution offered by some agencies, for a minimum monthly cost of €250/month. The price varies according to the modules installed.
For organisations and institutions that are still using Drupal 7, we strongly advise them to start the administrative process of building a new website. Agencies are already busy migrating many sites to Drupal 9.
Make a quick decision! For your website, your security, the security of your users and your reputation!
Do you want to benefit from security updates and all the new features of Drupal 9?
