Drupal 10: Pushing the Platform Forward

Watching the Sunsets

Two years after the sunsetting of Drupal 8, Drupal 7’s end of life is currently set for November 1, 2023. This means the end of community-based updates including bug fixes, new features, and security updates. Businesses running D7 web platforms should start taking steps now to migrate to the latest Drupal version.

As of this publishing date, Drupal 9 support, dependent on Symfony 4, will end when Symfony 4 support is slated to end on November 10, 2023. Web platforms running on Drupal 9 should make sure to address the latest bug and security fixes to ensure a smooth transition.

Where Are You on Your Upgrade Path?

If you’ve already upgraded your platform to Drupal 9, the path to Drupal 10 will be smooth sailing. If you’re not currently using Drupal 9, you’ll need to upgrade before proceeding to Drupal 10. For sites still running Drupal 7, the process is more complex than an upgrade—likely requiring a rebuild. 

Here’s the good news—for sites on D7, this will be the last major Drupal upgrade required. And in both scenarios, Drupal users have exciting new features and enhancements in store. Drupal 10 is cleaner, much more approachable, and not as developer-intensive. The latest features also mean less custom work and its ease of use will make client admins happy.

In the spirit of open source, Drupal 10 is going to draw more people into the community.

The Latest—Drupal 10

Drupal 10 is the result of the tireless efforts of the Drupal community—pushing the platform forward toward more elegant, accessible experiences. For example, developers using Drupal 8 and 9 had to adopt a specific build process to write code with ES6. However, Drupal 10 no longer supports IE11, eliminating the need for the build process. As a result, ES6 code can now be directly added to files without requiring compilation. Additionally, the Drupal community has started to replace jQuery with modern JavaScript in the core codebase.  jQuery libraries such as jQuery.once and jQuery.cookie have been removed from Drupal 10. The result is a cleaner frontend output for Drupal platforms. 
 
Key features and benefits of Drupal 10 include:

• A modern interface that provides a flexible layout with advanced accessibility features. There’s also a fresh UI kit that assists custom designing for a unique look and feel.
• A new StarterKit affords developers simplified templates—promoting ease of theme creation and an organized codebase to increase speed to market. 
• The new Claro administration theme offers a cleaner, more accessible interface for site management—on any device.
• An improved CKEditor5 delivers enhanced accessibility and content creation capabilities.
• The Automatic Updates Module means easy, secure automatic updates to Drupal core and contributed modules. This guarantees sites are always current with any performance and security fixes.
• The Project Browser enables developers to easily find modules. This browser lives inside the Drupal platform itself, which means a developer won’t need to leave the build to look for modules.
• The Decoupled Menus with JSON linkset enables developers to build menus in a decoupled manner using JSON data—providing flexibility and scalability to navigation management.

The release of Drupal 11 has yet to be scheduled and most likely, it won’t happen before 2024. 

There’s Still Some Time But …

We’ve all known these sunset dates far in advance and it may feel like there’s still a lot of time. However, transitions require a plan, budget, and preparation. Every initiative has unique needs and requirements. 

Phase2 is a leader in the Drupal community, contributing hundreds of modules and three distribution platforms for the public and private sectors. We have thousands of commits, patches, and Drupal contributions over the years, totaling over $2M in volunteer time. Our team has launched well over 1000 sites using Drupal and is ready to discuss any platform needs.

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