If you're one of the 70% of Drupal sites that are still on Drupal 7 at the time of this writing, you may be wondering what the upgrade path looks like to go from Drupal 7 to Drupal 9. What does the major lift look like to jump ahead two Drupal versions? How is this different than if you'd upgraded to Drupal 8 sometime in the last few years? And how long will it be before you have to do it again?
Upgrading via Drupal 8
Before the release of Drupal 9, the best path for Drupal 7 sites to upgrade to Drupal 9 was to upgrade to Drupal 8. The big selling point in Drupal 9's evolution is that updating from a late version of Drupal 8 to Drupal 9.0 is more like an incremental upgrade than the massive replatforming effort that the older Drupal migrations used to entail. Sites that jumped on the Drupal 8 bandwagon before Drupal 9.0 was released could benefit from the simple upgrade path from Drupal 8 to Drupal 9.0 instead of another big migration project.
Migrating to Drupal 8 is still a good option for Drupal 7 sites, even though Drupal 9 is now out.
You might find that the essential modules or themes you need are ready for Drupal 8 but not yet available for Drupal 9. The Drupal 8 to Drupal 9 upgrade path for many modules and themes should be relatively trivial, so many of them should be ready soon. But, there could be some outliers that will take more time. In the meantime, you can do the heavy lift of the Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 migration now, and the simpler Drupal 8 to Drupal 9 upgrade later, when everything you need is ready.
The Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 migration
The Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 upgrade involves some pretty significant changes. Some of the things you previously needed to do via contributed modules in Drupal 7 are now included in Drupal 8 core. However, the way you implement them may not be the same as some refactoring might be required to get feature parity when you migrate to Drupal 8.
The migration itself isn't a straight database upgrade like it was in Drupal 6 to Drupal 7; instead, you can migrate your site configuration and site content to Drupal 8. You have a choice of doing it two ways:
- Migrate everything, including content and configuration, into an empty Drupal 8 installation (the default method).
- Manually build a new Drupal 8 site, setting the content types and fields up as you want them, and then migrate your Drupal 7 content into it.
For a deeper dive into what these migrations look like, check out An Overview for Migrating Drupal Sites to 8.
Planning migrations
The Migration Planner is a helpful tool you may want to consider in your migration planning process. This tool queries a database to generate an Excel file that project managers or technical architects can use to help plan migrations. Developers who are performing the migrations can then use the spreadsheets.
Performing migrations
Core comes with some capability to migrate content automatically. If your site sticks to core and common contributed content types and fields, you may be able to use these automatic migrations. However, if your site relies heavily on contributed modules or custom code, an automatic migration might not be possible; you may need a custom migration approach.
The Drupal Migrate Upgrade, Migrate Plus, and Migrate Tools modules are good starting points for performing a custom migration. They add things like Drush support for the migration tasks and migration support for some non-core field types. You can access several custom migration processors that make it easy to do some fairly complex migrations. This can be done just by adding a couple of lines to a YAML file, like an entity_lookup processor that will take text from Drupal 7 content and do a lookup to determine what Drupal 8 entity the text refers to.
Drupal 7 works on older versions of PHP but recommends a minimum of 7.2. If you're migrating from an older Drupal 7 site, there may be several other platform requirements to investigate and implement.
Tooling and paradigm shifts
With the change to Drupal 8, developers are also expected to use new tools. You now use Composer to add modules and their dependencies, rather than Drush. Twig has replaced PHPTemplate as the default templating engine. Some core paradigms have shifted; for instance, developers need to learn to think in terms of events, or extending objects, instead of the old system of hooks. Many hooks still work, but they will probably be deprecated over time, and the new methods are safer ways to write code. The changes aren't insurmountable, but your organization must invest in learning the new way of doing things. You'll need to account for this education overhead when coming from Drupal 7; development teams may need more time to complete tasks as they learn new tools and paradigms.
Drupal 8's deprecation model
In addition to big changes in Drupal 8 core and implementation details, Drupal 8 also features a deprecation model that's familiar in the software world, but new in Drupal version upgrades. Instead of deprecating a bunch of code when there's a major version upgrade, Drupal 8 has introduced a gradual deprecation model.
As features and improvements are made in Drupal 8's codebase, old methods and functions are marked as deprecated within the code. Then, a few versions later - or in Drupal 9 - that code is removed. This gives development teams a grace period of backward compatibility, during which they can see alerts that code is deprecated, giving organizations time to implement the new code before it's completely removed.
The deprecated code also provides an easy hint about how to rework your code using new services and methods. Just look at what the hook does, and do that directly in your code.
This gradual deprecation model is one of the core reasons that the Drupal 9 upgrade is more like a minor version release for Drupal 8 than a major replatforming effort.
Jumping straight to Drupal 9
With that said, can you jump ahead from Drupal 7 to Drupal 9? If you want to skip over Drupal 8 entirely, you can jump directly to Drupal 9. The Drupal 7 migration ecosystem is still available in Drupal 9. Drupal 9 contains the same migrate_drupal module you need to migrate to Drupal 8. There has been discussion around possibly moving this module to a contributed module by Drupal 10, although no decision has been made at the time of this writing.
If you intend to go this route, keep in mind that all of the considerations when upgrading from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 apply if you jump straight to Drupal 9, as well. You'll still have to manage the migration planning, deal with tooling and paradigm shifts, and consider platform requirements.
Ultimately, however, jumping directly from Drupal 7 to Drupal 9 is a valid option for sites that haven't migrated to Drupal 8 now that Drupal 9 is released.
When to migrate to Drupal 9
Whichever route you choose, whether you're going to migrate via Drupal 8 or straight to Drupal 9, you should start the migration from Drupal 7 to Drupal 9 as soon as possible. Both Drupal 7 and Drupal 8 will reach end-of-life in November 2021, so you've got less than a year and a half to plan and execute a major platform migration before you'll face security implications related to the end of official Drupal security support. We'll cover that in more detail later in this series.
For any site that's upgrading from Drupal 7, you'll need to do some information architecture work to prepare for the migration to Drupal 8 or Drupal 9. Once you're on Drupal 8, though, the lift to upgrade to Drupal 9 is minimal; you'll need to look at code deprecations, but there isn't a major content migration to worry about. Check out our Preparing for Drupal 9 guide for more details around what that planning process might look like.
But what about waiting for a later, more stable version of Drupal 9, you ask? This is a common strategy in the software world, but it doesn't apply to the Drupal 9 upgrade. Because Drupal 9 is being handled more like an incremental point-release upgrade to Drupal 8, there aren't any big surprises or massive swaths of new code in Drupal 9. The core code that powers Drupal 9 is already out in the world in Drupal 8. There are no new features in the Drupal 9.0 release; just the removal of code that has already been deprecated in minor versions of Drupal 8.
Going forward, the plan for Drupal 9 is to release new features every six months in minor releases. The intent is for these features to be backward compatible, and to bring Drupal into the current era of iterative development versus the major replatforming projects of olde. There aren't any big surprises or major reliability fixes on the horizon for Drupal 9; just continued iteration on a solid platform. So there's no need or benefit to waiting for a later version of Drupal 9!
How to migrate to Drupal 9
Plan for migration
Planning for a Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 or Drupal 7 to Drupal 9 migration becomes a question of scope. Do you just want to migrate your existing site's content into a modern, secure platform? Or are you prepared to make a bigger investment to update your site by looking at information architecture, features, and design? Three factors that will likely shape this decision-making process include:
- Time and budget
- Developer skillset
- Release window
Time and budget for a migration
How much time are you able to allocate for what is likely to be a major replatforming effort? What's your budget for the project? Do you need to launch before an important date for your organization, such as college registration or an important government deadline? Can your budget support additional work, such as a design refresh?
For many organizations, getting the budget for a large project is easier as a one-time ask, so doing the design refresh as part of the migration project may be easier than migrating, and then planning a separate design project in six months. In other organizations, it may be difficult to get enough budget for all the work in one project, so it may be necessary to spread the project across multiple phases; one phase for the migration, and a separate phase for design.
When factoring in the time and budget for additional work, keep in mind that things like revisiting a site's information architecture could save you time and money in the migration process. Budgeting the time to do the work up-front can dramatically save in time and cost later in the migration process, by reducing unnecessary complexity before migrating instead of having to work with custom migrations to bring over content and entity types that you don't use anymore. This also improves maintainability and saves time for developers and editors doing everyday work on the new site.
Consider developer skills when planning your migration
10 years is a long time for developers to be working with a specific framework. If you've been on Drupal 7 since 2011, your developers are likely very experienced with "the Drupal 7 way" of doing things. Many of those things change in Drupal 8. This is a big factor in developer resistance around upgrading to Drupal 8 and Drupal 9.
Composer, for example, is a huge change for the better when it comes to managing dependencies. However, developers who don't know how to use it will have to learn it. Another big difference is that a lot of Drupal 8 and Drupal 9's core code is built on top of Symfony, which has changed many mental paradigms that experienced Drupal developers are accustomed to using. While some things may seem unchanged - a Block is still a Block, for example - the way they're implemented is different. Some things don't look the same anymore; developers will encounter things like needing to use YAML files instead of hooks to create menu items. Even debugging has changed; things like simple debugging via print() statement doesn't always cut it in the new world, so many developers are using IDEs like PHPStorm, or a host of plugins with other editors, just to code effectively in newer versions of Drupal.
All of this change comes with overhead. Developers must learn new tools and new ways of doing things when switching from Drupal 7 to Drupal 9. That learning curve must be factored into time and budget not only for the migration itself but for ongoing development work and maintenance after the upgrade. Progress during sprints will likely slow, and developers may initially feel resistant or frustrated while they learn the new ways of doing things.
Bringing in outside help during the migration process can mitigate some of this learning overhead. Partnering with an experienced Drupal development firm means your migration can be planned and implemented more quickly. One thing to consider when selecting an outside partner is how closely they collaborate with your internal team. When choosing a Drupal development firm to collaborate with your internal team, consider the value of partnering with experienced developers who can "teach" your internal teams how to do things. This reduces the learning curve for a team that's heavily experienced with older Drupal versions and can help your team get up to speed more quickly - saving money during the first year of your new site.
Plan a release window
The other aspect of planning for the Drupal 7 to Drupal 9 upgrade is planning a release window. Plan to have your migration project complete before Drupal 7 is scheduled to reach end-of-life in November 2021. If you can't make that deadline, then start planning now for an Extended Support engagement to keep your site secure until you're able to complete the migration.
You'll want to plan the release window around key dates for your organization, and around other support windows in your stack. For example, if you're a retailer, you may want to have the migration completed before the end of Q3 so you're not upgrading during holiday initiatives. Education organizations may plan their release during slow periods in the school's calendar, or government websites may need to be ready for key legislation.
When it comes to your stack, you'll want to plan around other important release windows, such as end-of-support for PHP versions, or upgrading to Symfony 4.4. This is particularly important if you need to upgrade dependencies to support your Drupal 7 to Drupal 9 migration. Check out Drupal 8 Release Planning in the Enterprise for more insights about release planning.
Revisit information architecture, features, and design
Because the jump from Drupal 7 to Drupal 9 is so substantial, this is a good time to revisit the information architecture of the site, do a feature audit, and consider whether you want to make design changes.
Is it time to update your site's information architecture?
Before you jump into a Drupal 9 upgrade project, you should perform an audit of your existing Drupal 7 site to see what you want to carry forward and what you can lose along the way. Did you set up a content type that you only used once or twice, and never touched again? Maybe you can delete that instead of migrating it. Are you using a taxonomy that was set up years ago, but no longer makes sense? Now is a good time to refine that for the new version of your site.
Content migration is also a relatively easy time to manipulate your data. You can migrate Drupal 7 nodes or files into Drupal 9 media entities, for instance. Or migrate text fields into address fields or list fields into taxonomy terms. Or merge multiple Drupal 7 content types into a single Drupal 9 content type. Or migrate content from a deprecated Drupal 7 field type into a different, but supported, Drupal 9 field type. These kinds of things take a bit more work in the migration, but are completely possible with the Migration toolset, and are not difficult for developers with migration experience. The internet is full of articles about how to do these kinds of things.
In addition to the fine details, it's also a good time to take a look at some big-picture questions, like who is the site serving? How has this changed since the Drupal 7 version of the site was established, and should you make changes to the information architecture to better serve today's audience in the upcoming Drupal 9 site?
Have your feature needs changed?
Drupal 7 was released in 2011. Nearly a decade later, in 2020, the features that seemed important at Drupal 7's inception have changed. How have the feature needs of your content editors changed? Has your site become media-heavy, and do your content editors need large searchable image archives? Do you want to deliver a dynamic front-end experience via a bespoke React app, while giving content editors a decoupled Drupal framework to work in?
Many editors love the new Layout Builder experience for creating customized site pages. It's something that doesn't exist in Drupal 7 core and is arguably better than what you get even when you extend Drupal 7 with contributed modules. Drupal 8 and 9 have built-in media handling and a WYSIWYG editor, eliminating the need for dozens of Drupal 7 contributed modules that do not always cooperate with each other, and focusing developer attention on the editorial UX for a single canonical solution.
Revisit the needs of your content editors and site users to determine whether any existing features of the current site are no longer important and whether new feature needs warrant attention in the upgrade process. This could be particularly helpful if you find that current features being provided by contributed modules are no longer needed; then you don't have to worry about whether a version of those modules is available in Drupal 8/9, and can deprecate those modules.
Ready for a design update?
If your Drupal 7 site hasn't had a design refresh in years, the upgrade process is a good time for a design refresh. Plan for a design refresh after the upgrade is complete. Drupal 9 will have a new default theme, Olivero, which features a modern, focused design that is flexible and conforms with WCAG AA accessibility guidelines. Olivero has not yet been added to Drupal core - it's targeted to be added in 9.1 - but it is available now as a contributed module any Drupal 8 or Drupal 9 site can use. Olivero is a great starting point for sites that want an updated design.
If you're planning a custom design project, keep accessibility and simplicity at the forefront of your design process. You may want to engage in the design discovery process with a design firm before you plan your Drupal 9 release; a good design partner may make recommendations that affect how you proceed with your migration.
Perform the migration
The process of migrating from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 has improved since Drupal 8's initial release, but it can still be an intricate and time-consuming process for complex sites. We wrote An Overview for Migrating Drupal Sites to 8 to provide some insight around this process, but upgrading sites must:
- Plan the migration
- Generate or hand-write migration files
- Set up a Drupal 8 site to actually run migrations
- Run the migrations
- Confirm migration success
- Do some migration cleanup, if applicable
Unlike prior Drupal upgrades, migrating to Drupal 8 isn't an automatic upgrade. A Drupal 7 site's configuration and content are migrated separately into a new Drupal 8 site. There are tools available to automate the creation of migration files, but if you've got a complex site that uses a lot of custom code or many contributed modules, you'll only go so far with automated tools. You'll need to revisit business logic and select new options to achieve similar results or deprecate the use of Drupal 7 contributed modules and custom code in your site to move forward to Drupal 8 and Drupal 9.
Whether you're going to upgrade to Drupal 8 and then Drupal 9, or migrating directly from Drupal 7 to Drupal 9, these migration considerations and the process itself will be the same. The only difference would be whether the new site you migrate content into is a Drupal 8 site or a Drupal 9 site.
Upgrading from Drupal 8 to Drupal 9
If you choose to go through Drupal 8, once you get to Drupal 8, finishing the migration to Drupal 9 is relatively easy. Upgrade to the latest version of Drupal 8; the upgrade to Drupal 9 requires Drupal 8.8.x or 8.9.x. Along the way, you'll be notified of any deprecated code or contributed modules you'll need to remove before upgrading to Drupal 9. Make sure any custom code is compatible with Drupal 9, and then update the core codebase to Drupal 9 and run update.php.
Voila! The long upgrade process is complete.