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A Brief History of Drupal 7 and Beyond

Officially released in January 2011, Drupal 7 has been a website favorite for more than ten years. Drupal 7 offered a lot of advantages over Drupal 6 including usability enhancements, modern themes (for the time), and many of the beloved features of Content Construction Kit (CCK). It was responsible for the large increase in Drupal adoption from its release through 2016 around the time Drupal 8 was ready. As someone who’s been working with Drupal for a very long time, I have a soft spot for Drupal 7, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.

During the Drupal 8 development lifecycle, the Drupal community faced a lot of challenges due to the huge divergence in the architecture between versions Drupal 7 and 8. There were many heated exchanges and arguments as to why the Drupal 7 way was better as well as why Drupal should adopt the Symfony framework and evolve its platform. Given this large rift in ideologies, a fork of Drupal 7 was born in 2013: Backdrop. I highly recommend you read Matthew Tift’s The Cultural Construction of Drupal from 2015 for more context about this transition.

It took 5 long hard years to build Drupal 8 and its adoption was slow. Given the huge architectural shift between 7 and 8 and the ginormous number of Drupal modules and themes that had been developed on Drupal 7, porting to Drupal 8 was daunting for many. Migrating from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 usually meant a full rebuild, so it was an inflection point where site owners began looking seriously at other options.

Slowly, many modules and themes were ported to Drupal 8, and those of us who wanted to stick out the growing pains of Drupal’s evolution began to gain our footing. Although it was still difficult to convince many existing Drupal 7 site owners to migrate to Drupal 8, some did see the benefits and developers also started building Drupal 8 sites from scratch on the new architecture.

What was seen as a detriment to some, the huge re-architecture of Drupal 8 eventually allowed Drupal to evolve faster and faster over time. Major releases became more frequent and more stable and allowed for easier upgrades. Drupal 9 was touted as the “easiest upgrade in a decade” and then Drupal 10 came along which was even easier. Through easier upgrades between major versions and initiatives like Drupal 9 readiness and Drupal 10 readiness, the Drupal community can focus less on maintenance and legacy code and more on innovating the CMS.

While (to many) the current state of Drupal feels full of promise and hope for the future, there’s been plenty of analysis of Drupal usage, trends, and decline over the years that are worth a read and provide historical context.

With any technology, there will be doomsday sayers and there will be the normal evolution of growth and decline. Knowing the power of Drupal and the character of the Drupal community, I’m optimistic that Drupal will be a viable CMS for years to come. But where does that leave Drupal 7?

Drupal 7 End-of-Life (EOL)

Software constantly evolves with old versions becoming obsolete and replaced by newer versions. During this process, dates are given for the software version’s “end of life”. Having these dates in place allows people time to plan and upgrade to newer versions and keep up-to-date with the technology.

While Drupal 8's end-of-life was in November 2021 and Drupal 9’s EOL date is today (November 1st), Drupal 7’s end-of-life (EOL) has been an ever-moving target. Initially, the end-of-life was planned for November 2021 after Drupal 9’s release and a decade after Drupal 7’s release. But, with the pandemic and the slow transition off of Drupal 7, the EOL date was initially extended to this month (November) of this year to coincide with Drupal 9's EOL.

The two-year extension did help and gave site owners more time to upgrade or move their sites to other platforms. But, as of early 2023, Drupal 7 usage still showed more than 400,000 installs. The Drupal usage graph isn’t entirely accurate as it requires the site to have a module enabled that some site builders disable and development sites with the module enabled would be counted, but it is a good back-of-the-envelope number. It’s particularly useful when comparing it against the other versions. As of today, the Drupal usage graph shows roughly half of all Drupal installs being Drupal 7 versus all other Drupal versions combined.

Given the (still) large Drupal 7 user base and the hope of providing easier tools for migrating off of Drupal 7, the EOL date was extended one more (and supposed final) time. You now have until January 2025 before Drupal 7 will “no longer be supported”. The official Drupal 7 EOL page provides more information and “certified partners” who can help with Drupal 7 transitions.

Drupal 7 EOL Soft Landing

If you talk with Drupal 7 site owners, you get two main responses for why they are still on Drupal 7. One common reason is the cost of the move whether it's moving to Drupal 10 or WordPress or some other technology. It can be expensive.

Another typical reason given for staying on Drupal 7 is that they like the site they have and see no reason for changing. Why should they upgrade or transition when they see no value in doing so? Won’t the site essentially be the same as what they have already? They are comfortable staying where they are.

The Drupal 7 Soft Landing Initiative was born out of the reality of these answers. Irina Zaks spearheaded the initiative with the primary goal:

“...to support owners of current D7 sites with guidance on what to do before Drupal 7's End-of-Life date. This includes giving them documentation, resources, and tools to understand how to migrate to modern versions of Drupal, improving those tools and resources where we can, and maintaining an open dialog with this community of users.”

Irina presented on the initiative at the Stanford WebCamp earlier this year and was interviewed about it as well. There is also starting documentation on Understanding your options as a Drupal 7 site owner that you can review and contribute to. I encourage you to check out and participate in this worthy community initiative through the issue queue and Drupal #d7-soft-landing Slack channel.

Drupal 7 and Backdrop

The Drupal 7 Soft Landing Initiative, rightly so, is primarily focused on making it easier for Drupal 7 site owners to move to Drupal 10 or to Backdrop to keep these sites within the Drupal ecosystem. Now, with the controversial history of Backdrop, you may balk at it being included in the same breath as Drupal 10.

While I haven’t seen an “official” endorsement of using Backdrop by Dries (Drupal's founder) or the Drupal Association, Dries did say this about Backdrop in 2022:

“Backdrop is part of the family. I am comfortable with them around. We embrace them. We like what they do. What they are doing is valuable. They made people stay in Drupal 7.”

This is a long time coming. I remember many tears and fighting in the early days. I, for one, would be happy with a more formal endorsement by the Drupal Association.

But, even with the more welcoming stance, we also learned that Jen Lampton’s DrupalCon submissions about Backdrop had always been rejected up until that point. Backdrop has since had its own Backdrop Live conference where its open source community shares lessons learned and best practices. The next event is scheduled for March of next year.

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Drupal 7 EOL Options

Drupal 7 site owners who haven’t yet moved off of D7 still have more than a year to do something. No doubt, a good chunk of them will stay even past the new deadline in 2025. It’s unrealistic to think otherwise. Whether that’s 50% of the current 400k sites or 90% or something in between, that remains to be seen. And, given the numbers, I highly doubt more than 50% of the sites will transition.

This aims to be a fairly comprehensive list of what you can do with your Drupal 7 site in preparation for EOL, so let me know if I missed anything. These are roughly ordered based on effort, but your mileage may vary since it’s highly dependent on the complexity of your site, the changes you make, and the technologies you choose.

  1. Do nothing, and leave the site as is.
  2. Remove the site entirely.
  3. Create a static archive of the site, and then remove the Drupal 7 site.
  4. Create a static version of the site, and lock down the Drupal 7 site.
  5. Migrate to Backdrop.
  6. Migrate to a “no-code platform” (e.g. Wix/Weebly/Squarespace).
  7. Migrate to Drupal 10.
  8. Migrate to WordPress.
  9. Migrate to Drupal 11.
  10. Migrate to something else.

Let’s go over some quick pros and cons for each of these.

1. Do nothing, and leave the site as is.

You may decide to just risk it and ignore the EOL and see what happens. Based on past history, I predict there will be a lot of sites doing this. This may be due to sheer ignorance, perhaps they don’t even know the site is running on Drupal 7. This could be due to technical issues of being unable to access the Drupal code. It could be the site owner is not concerned about security since they are the only ones accessing the admin interface and naively think that makes the site not hackable.

Pros

  • No effort*
  • No extra cost initially*
  • Same website and workflows assuming you like it as it is
  • Open source so you can modify the code if you want
  • Lots of other sites use Drupal 7 so maybe companies provide long-term support

* If you do nothing, you may have “no effort” at first, but there is a high risk that you will pay the price later. Just like with any type of maintenance, the longer you wait, the more you risk having it cost *more* than it would have if you had done the maintenance in the first place. This may be due to having to move to a new hosting provider. Having the site unexpectedly break due to a hosting provider updating infrastructure without your knowledge. Getting hacked and dealing with the ramifications of setting up your site again and potential security breaches, etc.

Cons

  • Huge security risk
  • Minimal to no bug fixes by the Drupal community
  • Long-term maintenance and support issues
  • Drupal 7 developers may start charging more to work on the legacy code
  • Don’t take advantage of improvements in web platforms
  • May cost extra money due to security breaches or specialized hosting
  • Bad sleep?

2. Remove the site entirely.

Pros

  • Minimal effort
  • No more long-term costs
  • No more maintenance
  • Highest security of all!
  • Sleep better?!

Cons

  • No website :)
  • Lost content history
  • Lost organic traffic
  • Lost credibility?

3. Create a static archive of the site, and then remove the Drupal 7 site.

Pros

  • Still have a website
  • Looks the same (assuming you like the current look-and-feel)
  • Simple technology
  • Minimal effort (if the site can be fully static)
  • Minimal maintenance
  • Potentially better performance
  • Highest security (besides removing your website entirely)
  • Hosting is likely to be cheaper

Cons

  • No Drupal or CMS bells and whistles
  • Potentially hard to change look-and-feel
  • Different workflow if the content still needs updating
  • Only good for web pages without the need for database queries

4. Create a static version of the site, and lock down the Drupal 7 site.

Pros

  • Still have a website
  • Looks the same (assuming you like the current look-and-feel)
  • Fairly minimal effort to set up
  • Potentially better performance
  • Fairly high security depending on how Drupal site is locked down
  • Still can use Drupal workflows
  • Open source so you can modify the code if you want
  • Lots of other sites use Drupal 7 so maybe companies provide long-term support

Cons

  • Still running Drupal 7 on the backend
  • Minimal to no bug fixes by the Drupal community
  • Long-term Drupal maintenance and support issues
  • Drupal 7 developers may start charging more to work on the legacy code
  • More technology, hosting, configuration, and maintenance
  • May or may not be more expensive depending on hosting options
  • Don’t take advantage of improvements in web platforms
  • Only good for web pages without the need for database queries*

* You could “proxy” to the Drupal 7 site for pages that are dynamic, but then this defeats the purpose of totally locking down D7 to minimize the risk of security breaches.

5. Migrate to Backdrop.

Pros

  • Relatively easy migration
  • Nice open source community
  • Good documentation
  • Improved functionality compared to Drupal 7
  • Gives you a chance to redesign your theme and features
  • Higher security than Drupal 7 will be after EOL
  • Potentially better performance depending on your configuration
  • Probably a comparable or lower cost for maintenance

Cons

  • Not as popular as Drupal
  • Drupal 7 modules and themes you need might not be ported
  • Have to port your own modules and themes (though shouldn't be too hard)
  • Some learning curves in UI and development
  • Potentially smaller pool of developers to support your site
  • Less managed hosting options

6. Migrate to a “no-code platform” (e.g. Wix/Weebly/Squarespace).

No-code web platforms are very popular for a reason. Non-developers can create a pretty cool site just using the UI. It’s particularly useful if you have a website with very few pages. Drupal, on the other hand, is the “Swiss army knife” of CMSs and you can build pretty much anything. You want your own Facebook competitor? You could build something pretty compelling with Drupal. For small sites that don’t need much updating, a no-code system might be just fine.

Pros

  • Small to medium effort depending on site
  • No-code solution with UI-only configuration
  • Cost will likely be cheaper than your Drupal hosting plan
  • Less site maintenance since the platform provider handles that
  • Gives you a chance to redesign your theme and features
  • Potentially more popular than Drupal depending on the choice

Cons

  • Not well-suited for larger websites or more complex functionality
  • Large target for hackers (e.g. Weebly breach 2022)
  • Potentially slower than your original site but this is very site-specific
  • Must less flexibility and extensibility compared to Drupal
  • Limited to what the no-code platform provides for UI and functionality
  • Automated migration may be difficult
  • Proprietary so cannot access or change code

7. Migrate to Drupal 10.

Pros

  • Strong open source community
  • Automated tools for migrating content
  • Great admin interface and accessibility
  • Lots more bells and whistles than Drupal 7
  • Gives you a chance to redesign your theme and features
  • More modern themes and codebase compared to Drupal 7
  • Easy upgrades once on Drupal 10
  • Great support for decoupled websites
  • World-class internationalization capabilities
  • Super flexible and extensible compared to most CMS and SaaS alternatives
  • Strong security with dedicated security team
  • Better performance than Drupal 7 depending on configuration
  • Drupal 7 Soft Landing Initiative is helping improve tools and docs
  • Open source so you can modify the code if you want
  • Coming soon: Automatic Updates, Project Browser, maybe a New Page Builder 

Cons

  • Complete rebuild
  • Less popular than Drupal 7 and some alternative platforms
  • Potentially large effort
  • Might cost more than building your original site
  • Have to port your custom modules and themes
  • Requires Drupal developers with different skill sets than for Drupal 7
  • Maintenance might cost more due to more advanced system requirements*

8. Migrate to WordPress.

WordPress is the goliath of content management systems. According to BuiltWith, 30% of the top 1 million websites that use CMS technologies are on WordPress. Drupal contends with the next level of technologies at 3% of the market share. Then there is a very long tail of web technologies… enough to make your head spin! WordPress is popular for good reason. The admin interface is fairly easy to use, you can build common websites pretty quickly with it, and there are a lot of themes available. If you have a simple brochureware website yet want some of the extra features that a CMS provides (over a no-code solution), then by all means, consider WordPress as a viable option.

Pros

  • Very popular
  • Strong open source community
  • Medium to large effort depending on the site
  • Automated tools for migrating content
  • Great admin interface
  • Maintenance will likely be easier (for now) due to automatic updates
  • Large pool of developers who often charge less than Drupal devs
  • Hosting costs may be cheaper than for Drupal hosting
  • Lots of nice looking themes
  • Gives you a chance to redesign your theme and features
  • Larger pool of WordPress developers who may charge less

Cons

  • Complete rebuild
  • Might cost more than building your original site
  • More likely to be hacked given it’s more popular
  • Need to learn a completely different user interface and workflow
  • Have to recreate functionality of your custom modules and themes
  • May be slower than Drupal depending on your configuration
  • Requires WordPress developers with different skill sets than for Drupal 7
  • Must less flexibility and extensibility compared to Drupal
  • Not well-suited to more complex website functionality

9. Migrate to Drupal 11.

Pros

Cons

  • See the list of Drupal 10 Cons above
    Not available until the latter part of 2024, giving less time to upgrade

10. Migrate to something else.

It’s obviously impossible to list the pros and cons of an unknown technology :) The effort, maintenance, and support may cost more or less than if you switch to one of the above options. But, you are likely to end up with fewer available features than what’s available in Drupal, since Drupal is known for its flexibility and extensibility.

The biggest advantage, assuming cost is not a concern, is you can pick whatever technology is the best fit for you. Some possibilities are Shopify, Joomla, TYPO3, Contentful, etc. Check out a very large list of possible CMS options from Builtwith. Let me know what some of your favorites are!

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Drupal 7 EOL Resources

There are tons of blog posts, tutorials, docs, and videos that already cover dealing with Drupal 7’s end-of-life, so I’ll just list a few here (in chronological order) for some additional resources. If you have any good resources you’d like me to add, DM me in Drupal Slack!