Drupal 7 EOL

Drupal is a well-known and open system for the whole world with multilingual support and accessibility for people with disabilities. For some time, Drupal has been called the most innovative platform for creating semantic sites.

Since 2011, when the top-quality version of Drupal 7 became publicly available to the world, millions of websites run on this content management system. And now in 2022, this version is still actually popular. The End of Life of version 7 has been delayed several times due to the number of users and global challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

And for now, there is a final date of EOL of version 7 - it is 11.01.2023. So it is not final and will be reviewed in July 2023. The decision will depend on the total number of users of version 7. As of September 2022, there are as many as 54% of such users against 25% of Drupal 9. That is, the owners of sites using Drupal 7 seem to have some time still.

Final answer to the question "When is Drupal 7 end of life?". According to the latest info from the official Drupal website, Drupal 7 EOL is on January 5, 2025. This date is final and will not change

But is it a good idea to wait until the end of Drupal 7's life? Because so many companies still use this version. Let's take a look at the most famous sites developed on the new content management system Drupal 9. These are Tesla, JYSK, Pinterest, General Electric, Bayer, AMD, and others. These are the companies that have already solved their future problems on the web. This will allow their websites to be more productive for a long time to come.

After the EOL of Drupal 7, what will those companies who did not manage to switch to a new version or another CMS in time lose? The software will not receive security updates and bug fixes. Also, Drupal 7 modules will not be updated. But there are options that can be used for now, such as finding a team of developers who will be able to support the security module update program for a while longer. This is not the most convenient solution, because over time you will still have to make a transition or migration.

Why is so good about Drupal 9 and why I would advise you to start the transition right now?

• The new version has significantly higher security settings
• Multilingualism "out of the box"
• Easier content editing thanks to WYSIWYG
• Full compatibility with mobile devices
• More than 20,000 modules
• Easy distribution of user roles on the site
• Renovation Drupal 10 from 9 will be much easier and painless

Firstly, you need to do a content audit to determine what exactly you need to transfer and what not. If you have chosen to migrate or switch to a new CMS, it is essential to understand that the changes will be drastic and may require the involvement of a whole team, including designers and SEO specialists. High Quality Web Solutions is an all-in-one company with specialists with more than 10 years of experience, so reach out to us for help.

Switching to another CMS makes sense if the website is simple, such as a blog or a landing page. In this case, you need another one, such as WordPress. You also need to understand whether the website will need to be scaled in the future. The cost of work will depend on the complexity of your website. Migrating to Drupal 9 is essentially building a new website. But as mentioned above, this is a sure and big step into new possibilities.

If you think that migration is not on time, we will help with Drupal 7 support and maximum optimization. Possible bugs, security, and all important modules will be updated. It will be a joint decision according to your budget. This model of interaction with our company will not take much effort and will allow us to gradually prepare for future changes, the website will be ready for migration at any time.

I rather quote the Drupal.org site:

“Drupal incorporates the best technologies from the open-source ecosystem. Composer, Symfony, Twig, PHPUnit, and more. Drupal 9 updates these components to ensure longer support for the security of the website components and to provide the ability to use the latest features."

You will also be sure of the safety of the website and its users. Increased speed and ability to attract a wider audience due to new web-accessibility settings. Thanks to multilingualism, most users from all over the world will know about your product or company. It is more convenient to adjust the content in Drupal 9. Create content once, and use it anywhere many times on any device.

All this makes Drupal 9 perfect for large-scale and secure projects.
Contact High Quality Web Solutions now to choose the best way to solve your website problems.