For a surprise, it really is a surprise!! While we were announcing to all our clients and partners that support would end in November 2022, a security alert on February 23, 2022 announced a postponement of Drupal 7's end of life to November 1, 2023.
Even better, the security commission announced it would review its position every year, depending on the number of Drupal 7 sites still in use!
This pragmatic and reassuring decision is no doubt rooted in the level of effort required to upgrade from Drupal 7 to Drupal 9. To avoid the risk of Drupal 7 users migrating to other CMSs or communities, drupal.org has wisely chosen to extend support for Drupal 7.
Let’s also remember that, at the time, fundamental disagreements over the future of Drupal 8 prompted part of the Drupal community to create a Fork of Drupal 7, Backdrop CMS, which has been developing on its own path ever since! Backdrop 1.0, launched in 2015, included a number of major improvements over Drupal 7 while maintaining a high degree of compatibility.
The announcement from drupal.org, therefore, comes at just the right time. Here it is in full:
https://www.drupal.org/psa-2022-02-23
"Over a decade after its first release, Drupal 7 is still widely used. [...] Drupal 9 is well maintained, secure, stable, and feature-rich, but many organizations still rely on Drupal 7. [...] Although Drupal 7 site users and administrators should continue to plan their upgrade to a newer version of Drupal, if they are unable to upgrade before the currently announced end-of-life date, it would not be responsible for us to leave them vulnerable.
Therefore, we are announcing that going forward, Drupal 7's planned end-of-life date will be re-evaluated each year. As of today, we are extending end-of-life by one year, to November 1, 2023.
The Drupal project lead, Dries Buytaert, the Drupal Association, and the Drupal Security Working Group have been monitoring the Drupal 7 ecosystem since the previous end-of-life extension. [...] We have determined that it is clearly necessary to provide continued support to members of our community still using this version. Ultimately, we have a moral imperative to keep as many of these sites secure as possible.
We will announce by July 2023 whether we will extend community support for Drupal 7 for another year. The factors we will consider are community support, Drupal 7 usage, and active Drupal 7 maintainers."
Relief for Drupal 7 site users and administrators
The gap between Drupal version 7 and versions 8/9 is significant (integration of Symfony, change of template engine to Twig, etc.). The community has decided to maintain a "content migration path" from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8/9. However, it's necessary to start from a "brand new" instance. Since Drupal 8, the community has committed to reducing the effort required for future major upgrades.
Migrating a Drupal 7 site to Drupal 9 still offers the following advantages:
- The technology stack will be robust and maintainable for the long term;
- Content migration is ensured;
- Operational requirements are secured (OS versions, PHP, MariaDB, Solr, Apache, etc.)
That said, you have a period of 20 months to complete the upgrade… Unless the end-of-life is extended again, at their discretion, in July 2023…
More time, more options
With the announcement that Drupal 7's end-of-life date will be reviewed each year, the Drupal community is opening several options:
- Resist the trend of planned obsolescence :)
Leave things as they are, at least until November 2023, but updates will be less frequent and we do not know what will happen when PHP7 reaches its end of life.
- Migrate the current Drupal 7 site to Drupal 9 with the same features and interface.
The software update is done without altering the site's UX and UI design. Content is migrated, and the project management effort is limited.
- Completely rebuild the site with Drupal 9.
The update is carried out along with a redesign of the site's UX and UI, and/or new features. Content is "migratable" without too much difficulty. But there is a major design and specification project involved.
See also:
The path to Drupal 9 – New features, migration from Drupal 7, Drupal 8 to Drupal 9… - 03/27/2020
The Drupal 10 roadmap and how to prepare - 07/18/2021
Obituary: End of life of Drupal 8 - 12/02/2021
History of Backdrop CMS