The launch of a new website isn’t the end of the project. In fact, it is just the beginning. Websites evolve over time. Sometimes that evolution is driven by your changing business needs for example rebranding, and sometimes it’s driven by updates to the technology that supports your site.
The unfortunate reality is that sometimes the technology your website uses becomes obsolete.
If your website uses the Content Management System (CMS) Drupal 7, you will probably be aware that Drupal 7 is coming to the end of its life.
The Drupal project decided to rebuild the core of Drupal on the open source framework Symfony for version 8. This was a great move forward, building the CMS on a powerful and secure web framework, but it means any upgrade from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 is in practical terms a rebuild.
Drupal 7 was released back in January 2011 and it will stop being supported on 5th January 2025. The Drupal website has more information on the end of life for Drupal 7 and what this means for your website. The key point to consider is that there may be security vulnerabilities and once known, these could be exploited.
There are three options open to you
Option 1: upgrade from Drupal 7 to Drupal 10
The current version of Drupal at the time of writing is version 10. Upgrading to Drupal 10 is a lot of work. A blog post by Acquia, a company co-founded by the creator of Drupal, states that Drupal 7 to Drupal 10 upgrades can take anywhere from 16 to 30 weeks!
Option 2: rebuild your website on an alternative platform
In practice, upgrading from Drupal 7 to 10 is a rebuild. It might be a good time to assess how you’ve been getting on with Drupal and research the pros and cons of other Content Management Systems.
We use Craft CMS, a modern and accessible CMS with great content editing tools, and WordPress, a widely supported open source CMS. For more complex web applications we recommend building sites on Laravel, a web framework designed to help build web apps.
Option 3: get specialist support for Drupal 7 after 5th Jan 2025
Specialist Drupal companies can offer extended support for Drupal 7. Although this is not a long-term solution it will give you some breathing room. However, we strongly recommend you look to upgrade or rebuild your website.
How can we can help?
We have helped many clients rebuild their old Drupal 7 websites on a range of platforms, from custom Laravel web applications to switching to Craft CMS. We can help review your needs and help you choose an alternative CMS that best meets your organisation’s needs.
Let us take the stress out of digital! Get in touch to find out more.