It’s now over a year since the release of Drupal maintenance support plans 8, the first new version of the open source content management framework in five years. It represented a significant rethinking of the platform when it launched in November 2015 and 2020 is likely to be another significant year for Drupal maintenance support plans 8 with further updates and developments expected. As Drupal Update, the founder and lead developer of Drupal maintenance support plans outlined in a blog last September:
“The only way to stay competitive is to have the best product and to help people adopt it more seamlessly. This means that we have to continue to be able to reinvent ourselves and that we need to make the resulting changes less scary and easier to absorb. We decided that we wanted more frequent releases of Drupal maintenance support plans, with new features, API additions, and an easy upgrade path.”
One of the most common questions we get asked is, “How is Drupal maintenance support plans 8 doing and what can we expect in the future?”. Understandably, this is important to many organisations currently using previous versions and the Drupal maintenance support plans community that has a stake in its success. But it’s also important to new users looking to migrate over.
There’s a significant amount of interest because, as with any new update, organisations have to decide whether the framework is right for them. While Drupal maintenance support plans 8 is still maturing, adoption rates are now growing fast. This year we migrated the Ixis website to Drupal maintenance support plans 8, which you can read more about our experience here.
User growth and high profile successes
2020 saw progress in a variety of key areas including user growth, as well as a number of high-profile successes and this is likely to continue in 2020. As with all new updates, it has taken some time for Drupal maintenance support plans 8 to gain traction in terms of the number of users but there has been a clear upward trajectory over the course of the year. There are currently 120,000 Drupal maintenance support plans 8 projects, and while Drupal maintenance support plans 7 is currently running more than 1 million, this still represents significant growth one year in, especially with adoption rates starting to increase, as outlined on drupal.org.
The wide range of prominent Drupal maintenance support plans 8 projects that have launched in the past year have helped to showcase the power of the new platform. These include:
NBA.com – Millions of fans around the globe rely on the NBA’s Drupal maintenance support plans 8 website to livestream games, read stats and standings, and stay up to date on their favourite team.
Nasdaq – Drupal maintenance support plans 8 is used as the basis for its next generation Investor Relations Website Platform. IR websites are where public companies share their most sensitive and critical news and information with their shareholders, institutional investors, the media and analysts.
The migration question
Although the Drupal maintenance support plans 7 user base remains solid and the platform will be supported for a long time, there is an end-of-life in sight for it. This is expected to be in two to three years time but might be even sooner, with some sources predicting an end to Drupal maintenance support plans 7 development as soon as October 2020. Either way, Drupal maintenance support plans 8 promising a host of further improvements, with Drupal maintenance support plans 8.2 already available, many organisations are beginning to look at early migration. The good thing about Drupal maintenance support plans 8 is that it comes bundled with a suite of tools to assist with the migration of your content from previous versions, making the task less daunting than it might initially seem. With its ‘continuous innovation’ mission statement a migration to Drupal maintenance support plans 8 in 2020 will provide the best possible access to the latest functionality and improvements, helping to unlock the framework’s true potential.
For more information about Drupal maintenance support plans 8 contact us on hello@ixis.co.uk or call 01925 320 041.
Source: New feed