Now that Drupal 9 is at the “end of life” stage and the Drupal developer community is focused on Drupal 10, are you wondering about the risks associated with staying on Drupal 9 versus the opportunities associated with migrating to Drupal 10? There are many resources available that document the risks and benefits in great detail, but they can be a lot for a non-technical audience to digest. Below, we've attempted to summarize risks and opportunities in an easy to digest format.

Want more details? Our web applications team is happy to help if you'd like to discuss the specifics. Let us know if you'd like to connect.

Risks | Opportunities | FAQ

Risks: Staying on Drupal 9

Security. Going forward, vulnerabilities will be discussed in open channels, making it easier for bad actors to exploit weaknesses.

• Risk example: Hackers exploit a new-found vulnerability that takes Drupal 9 sites offline. Finding a fix to the exploit will be the responsibility of individual site owners, potentially in collaboration with other members within the Drupal community.

Lack of core development. Drupal 9 has reached “end of life,” which means all development work on core Drupal 9 has stopped and developers are now focused on supporting Drupal 10. While at first glance this may not seem problematic, the discontinued development and support increases the risk functionality in Drupal 9 will break. Modern Drupal relies on tools outside of the core system, including staying current with the latest version of PHP, Symfony and other foundational dependencies. Without support for these updates in Drupal 9, troubleshooting and associated patches could require a significant time investment to investigate and resolve. Depending on the nature of the issue, this could create a critical gap and downtime.

• Risk example: After applying an update to a dependency, a key feature, such as the ability to clone existing website pages, breaks, requiring time and effort to investigate and correct without additional Drupal core support resources.

Lack of module development. Drupal websites are created using modern, feature-rich modules built within the community of Drupal developers. As with core development in Drupal 9, module support and development has also stopped. If a module is no longer functioning as designed, troubleshooting and associated fixes could require a significant time investment. Depending on the nature of the break, this could be a critical gap and result in downtime.

• Risk example: RFI forms use a module that is no longer supported on Drupal 9 because the developers have moved on to Drupal 10. After making an update, an issue arises with the forms, requiring time to investigate and resolve without support from core and module developers.

Technical debt. As internal maintenance and development in Drupal 9 continues, we incur technical debt, meaning the number of website issues independently maintained will continue to grow.

• Risk example: Upgrading to Drupal 10 from Drupal 9 is a process that might be better thought of as a “modernization” than a typical upgrade. Implementing new features in Drupal 9 will likely require some rework in Drupal 10.

Opportunities: Migrating to Drupal 10

Improved content editing. Drupal 10 features a more user-friendly content editor that identifies what you are typing (for example, a list) and auto-formats it accordingly.

• Opportunity example: Automated text formatting and options to format specific fields to ensure consistent presentation of information help make content creation easier and faster.

Improved safeguards. Drupal 10 supports greater granularity in permissions settings, providing content creators access to more types of content while decreasing the likelihood of creating a serious error.

• Opportunity example: Content creators are empowered with greater flexibility in crafting pages that support the needs of the content.

Improved page performance. Drupal 10’s use of BigPipe strategically loads content so pages load faster for the site visitor, creating a better overall user experience.

• Opportunity example: Page load times are improved for visitors across devices, allowing for faster response times and better interactions.

Accessibility testing. Drupal 10 has integrated automated accessibility testing to ensure core updates do not negatively impact content accessibility.

• Opportunity example: Proactively testing pages for accessibility issues following system updates helps spot issues to be addressed so the sites’ content continues to be accessible to as large an audience as possible.

FAQ

Do all campuses have to migrate to Drupal 10 at the same time?
No.

Would I still have edit access to my current site while Drupal 10 is being implemented?
Yes. Existing Drupal 9 sites will remain live and editable during the transition. Sites will be built in Drupal 10 in a parallel environment.

Are there opportunities for Drupal 10 to operate more efficiently with Marketing Cloud?
We are still investigating but believe that opportunities for greater efficiency likely exist.

Should we do discovery about ideal future state prior to migration, or should we rebuild existing content in Drupal 10 now?
It depends. A discovery session around future goals for the site and how Drupal 10 could best fit into overall marketing strategies would be helpful to determine the most effective approach. We're happy to help you brainstorm.