Hello Marketers! We’re writing this (Drupal 8) one for you.

The latest version of Drupal is version 8.7.2. You’re familiar of course. In fact, you’ve been on pins and needles ever since version 8.7.1(a). I’m sure you’ve been instasnaptweeting ever since it was issued.

OK, back to reality: You’re definitely more concerned with getting the data you need, driving great brand interactions, and maintaining costs (and keeping your InfoSec or IT teams happy)—than the latest CMS version.

However, what if I told you that your outdated Drupal 6 or 7 instance could actually hinder you from innovating, drain your budget, and potentially cause unnecessary security risks? And that once you get to Drupal 8, migration costs, security updates, and best-of-breed functionality (like content management and media libraries) from core Drupal contributions will help you deliver the audience experiences that grow your business.

So, should you migrate to Drupal 8 immediately? Yes.

Here’s why:

• More languages? Not a problem: multilingual capabilities - It doesn’t take an engineering background to know that creating a multilingual site is not an easy task. Taking a step back, there are so many questions to consider:
  • Should content be displayed in a single native language?
  • What percentage of your site traffic is in English vs. other languages?
  • How should you handle media files?
  • Is there a risk if changes are incurred by translations?
  • Will the translations be handled properly? Who will handle translations?

The good news is that creating a multilingual site became a lot easier with Drupal 8 with benefits for both site admins and end users. Drupal 8 is now part of “core” (the basic features). In previous versions of Drupal, you needed to install extra modules (collection of files that contain some functionality)  just to support multilingual, which meant a lot more work, added costs and additional maintenance. Drupal 8 brings multilingual support to core with 4 modules, localized content (which makes usability and translations easier so that content translation can be possible for all types, including taxonomies, field types et al) and there are 100+ default languages included.

• Ease of content editing - Building layouts has never been more intuitive than with Layout Builder! The tl;dr for Layout Builder allows fielded content on the back-end, but a true drag and drop front-end editing experience. There are even more added benefits including a flexible, admin interface, use of contextual links while keeping structured data. And you can now create layouts for templated content with Layout Builder. Many of Drupal’s competitors don’t allow such a templated approach to be done in browser.  (P.S. Learn more on this fantastic page-editing experience from my colleague, Caroline Casals here.)
• Responsiveness for all - Responsive behavior is no longer a nice-to-have, but de rigueur.  This was an add-on in Drupal 7, but a built-in feature with Drupal core includes built-in themes that are mobile responsive. Additional web services now allow for content to be accessible from Alexa, Siri, and other virtual assistants.
• Speed matters! - Drupal 8 has features that will make your websites faster without the need for a lot of technical experience. “Cache tags” are used making caching more efficient and also page loads faster.
• More robust security - Drupal 8 is the stable version of Drupal; functionalities and major modules have been ported over and are now supported by the Drupal open-source community.
• Integration friendly - Drupal 8 is set-up so that site administrators can easily use APIs to connect to a number of digital tools. Think: your deep integrations, like web analytic platforms, customer relationship management (CRM), email campaigns, social networks and marketing automation systems; you can rest easier that they’ll perform and communicate in concert.

So why else should you invest now? Drupal 7 is currently on life support.  As of November 2021, Drupal 7 will reach it’s “end of life” (EOL) which means that the version will no longer be supported by core maintainers.  

“No longer being supported” also means the following:

• Your site’s data and infrastructure could be vulnerable.
• Continued investment in an EOL version will be wasted dollars.

Drupal 9 is scheduled to be released next year (2020) which gives companies about a year to upgrade to Drupal 8. Don’t panic, but develop a reasonable plan for when you'll stop investing in your Drupal 7 platform, keep your site as up-to-date as you can (this will help security), and get on Drupal 8 as fast as you can.