8 Reasons Why You Should Migrate To Drupal 8
Website owners, designers, and brands today want to create their website on a leading content management system (CMS). They want their CMS to have various potent features, which comprises fast page loading speed, flexibility, and scalability. You can attain this and much more with Drupal 8.
Why should you opt-in for this update?
There are several reasons for updating to Drupal 8. Some of the essential benefits include:
- It helps to update the old and obsolete modules.
- It modifies your website’s core elements.
- It helps to update the theme as per requirement.
- It also updates your database content.
- It helps in developing utilities for incorporating Drupal 8 along with advanced enterprise software.
Today, Drupal 8 is known for its agility and scalability. And this brings us to yet another interesting and crucial question. Should you think about migrating immediately to Drupal 8? And the best answer to this is yes. This version is the most stable version that Drupal boasts of. The majority of the functionalities got ported successfully, and you can access the same in your Drupal community.
The essential things to consider while Migrating to Drupal 8
Users have multiple reasons to shift to Drupal 8. However, before making the shift, there are a few things to consider. The following pointers can help:
–The website type
Are you already using Drupal 7 for your company website or blog? If yes, then shifting to Drupal 8 is a smart decision and is easy. The process is seamless as the majority of contributed modules are all accessible from the Drupal community. It helps to save ample time.
–The core modules
All the Drupal default installation has core modules. It might not be possible for organizations and business owners to utilize every module. The usage depends on individual requirements. You need to stay aware of modules like the Symfony framework that provides greater flexibility. It streamlines the code reusing technique while creating custom modules.
–The contributed modules
You can count on Drupal 8 for assembling all the modules provided by the community as primary modules. Is your website community module different from the core module? If yes, then you might have to update this module, especially for Symfony, as you shift to Drupal 8. Start the process by arranging for an inventory check of the modules on a website. It will help you to recognize the ones that still aren’t core modules.
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What should you do when a contributed module is not present in Drupal 8? In such a situation, you can:
- Cancel out on the idea of resorting to the specific module and archive the data.
- Get in touch with an expert developer for module updates.
- Search for a new community module that has similar functionality.
- Try and customize a module that gets developed with the needed functionality.
–Customize the modules
Your company website might possess the custom modules! Hence, it is essential to shift the modules in Drupal 8. It’s because both Drupal 7 and 8 have different coding. A few functionalities on your current website might be complicated. To sort this, you might require professional assistance. An expert developer can help you here by assessing the website and also accurately designing the migration.
–The website theme
Drupal 8 utilizes TWIG that renders pages flexibly and securely! Hence, with this updated rendering engine won’t enable the Drupal 7 theme for getting ported to the new and updated version. Furthermore, there’s not a single module that can shift the theme directly to Drupal 8.
You can update the PHP template. It is one of the probable solutions, but users might find this challenging, without the guidance of an expert developer.
Are you searching for a simple solution?
If yes, you can resort to a theme that Drupal 8 backs up. Here you will get similar features and layout.
Still on Drupal 6 or 7? Reasons to move to Drupal 8
Are you still on two minds about shifting to Drupal 8?
If yes, then you are not alone. Other than the pointers discussed above, you might need to know a few essential reasons that will encourage you to make this shift.
–The effort and cost
If you are on Drupal 7, your website might face challenges as 2021 approaches! Companies and business owners planning to start any new project using Drupal 7 2021 onwards, might experience losses. It will not allow you to use your resources adequately. It indicates that all that you are executing on Drupal 7, should get rewritten the moment this version gets deprecated and obsolete.
It is essential to think about the ownership cost here! In the case of an Open Source platform, most people often overlook the expense of running projects. It’s because most licenses don’t exist. However, you need to consider the maintenance cost.
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The new release cycle for Drupal 8 might go up! And in a few cases, there might be a short-term maintenance expense.
It means you might require frequent upgrades, which involves constant release upgrades. The lesser release schemes need to get seamless and more comfortable as the brand-new platform evolves. In return, one can expect a better codebase.
On the other hand, the long-term maintenance averts the excess cost of needing to migrate from a crucial version to yet another i.e., migrating from Drupal 6 to 7 or 7 to 8. From the time Drupal 8 got released, migration to any crucial new release is no more challenging.
–Consider the user experience
Do you want your users to have the best user experience?
If yes, then it is essential to shift to Drupal 8. It is necessary for both users – the admin users and the final users who get affected by the frontend directly.
Right from its inception, Drupal 8 has concentrated on the overall user experience. It is because a favorable user experience ensures increased website visibility and website traffic. For this, Drupal 8 has welcomes initiatives like mobile-first technology and the like.
However, there’s more to the CMS than end-users! There are editorial teams and site builders as well.
They also play an essential part in the online ecosystem.
Today, we get to witness the way their experiences are getting prioritized through JS and admin UI initiatives and the like.
–The security aspect gets addressed
With the Drupal 8 release, most of the releases got covered. Also, most of the security aspects got addressed and resolved. Today, you can get patches for Drupal 6. It is essential to know that most of the community initiatives are focused on Drupal 8.
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Hence, Drupal 8 gets all the attention so that it’s the faster, secure, and improved version of Drupal.
It is also the easiest version to use till date. However, it is interesting to note that developers might discover a few security issues with the current Drupal version.
Here it will be Drupal 8. And should that occur, then these issues will get backported safely to Drupal 7.
–The overall performance
The moment a new Drupal version gets released; you have access to several online resources highlighting that it is slower than the last version. The same followed with the release of Drupal 8.
The truth is that Drupal 8 comes with increase functionalities at its core. It doesn’t indicate that Drupal 8 has a dense core.
Instead, it suggests that most (96%) of the websites in Drupal 7 got delivered using modules, are also present in Drupal 8.
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It is here that the main issue occurs! The people who make comparisons usually don’t count the facts. That means they lack the standard Drupal 7 modules, which don’t get counted on the performance metrics. As a result, they keep comparing multiple footprints.
The truth is Drupal 8 comes with an authenticated user cache and BigPipe. And all these aspects deliver content faster than Drupal 7. Hence, it’s a smart call to count on Drupal 8 for performance.
Drupal 8 makes the next transition easy
Many website designers often mull over waiting for Drupal 9.
Few companies do the same thing for averting the migration expenses for a short time. It is the same for Drupal and other software packages as well.
There are times when this is a smart decision.
However, in the case of Drupal 8, the brand-new life cycle and architecture provide smooth transitions. You can move away from the hassles of significant release modifications when you finally shift to Drupal 9.
Drupal 8 helps you to save significant transition costs. When you migrate directly to Drupal 8 from 6, you can save a single migration hassle and expense.
That is a massive saving for companies and business owners.
Once you are aware of all these reasons, you can arrive at an informed decision concerning Drupal 8 migration.
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