Drupal 7's End-of-Life: January 5th, 2025

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D7 end of life 2025

LAST UPDATE 06-06-2023

The final end-of-life date for Drupal 7 was decided: January 5th, 2025. As of this date, Drupal won't support this version anymore, and your D7 website will experience huge security and performance risks. Let's see how this impacts your D7 website, and how we can help you keep your website up until the end of 2025.

Will Drupal 7 remain supported?

Drupal 7 will continue to receive security updates until January 5th, 2025. 

Watch out! PHP 8 is coming. That will inevitably cause a whole bunch of modules to be unsupported in Drupal 7 if they are not updated as well. That can give a very urgent reason to start your migration to Drupal 9 today. So don't wait too long.

 

Exclusive D7 service from Dropsolid

As a digital company, we understand investing in a new platform comes with a lot of challenges. To give you a bit more time to make a business plan, we came up with a solution to keep your Drupal 7 website secure until 2027: Drupal 7 Maintenance Plan.  As Drupal experts, we do want to point out the risks of Drupal 7. We still stand by our position that switching to a newer version of Drupal is the best solution in the short term.

This is what we plan to do: 

  1. We discuss your case personally and together we draw up a future vision for your website.
  2. We make an action plan based on your wishes and needs: the Drupal 7 Maintenance Plan.
  3. We implement the action plan with PHP and Drupal 7 updates.

Drupal 7 support until 2027

 

4 reasons for switching to a newer version of Drupal in the short term

6 months for a new website? That's tight! 

When the Drupal Community decides to stop supporting D7, you only have 6 months to switch to a newer version. In this period, you need to find a suitable partner, prepare your business case, prepare your migration, and launch a new website. You already feel it, that's very tight!

Drupal 7 knowledge of developers is fading

New websites are made in more recent versions than Drupal 7. The more time passes, the more knowledge developers lose about Drupal 7. So guaranteeing the security of your Drupal 7 website becomes increasingly difficult.

You get stuck in a less modern website

Newer versions of Drupal work with modern designs, give content editors more freedom, and cater to today's visitor expectations. If you stay stuck in Drupal 7 for too long, your website will no longer be able to provide the best customer experience for your visitors.

Layout Builder as from Drupal 9

With Layout Builder, your content editors manage the entire website, so you save a lot of time and money for your developers.

Read the Drupal press release.

Need advice on your possibilities?

Our technical and strategic experts are happy to take a closer look at your website in order to better map out your possibilities.

colleagues helping out

FAQ about D7

What does end-of-life for Drupal 7 imply?

The term end-of-life (or EOL) is used to indicate the end of official support on a particular piece of software or product. The software in question is no longer sold, promoted or supported. In the case of Drupal 7, this means that Drupal’s community and security team will no longer be releasing any security patches or functional updates as of D7’s official EOL-date in November 2023.

Organizations will be able to keep using their Drupal 7 website for the time being. Nevertheless, technical problems will inevitably arise past D7’s EOL date - think of deprecated modules that are no longer supported or security issues that will no longer be addressed. This, in turn, will decrease your website’s SEO score. 

 

Choices for your current D7 site

  1. Option 1: migrate to a newer version of Drupal 

    You can choose to upgrade your existing Drupal environment to a newer version of Drupal. These versions are equipped to start building a Digital Experience Platform (DXP) for your business. In addition, the extensive compatibility between D8 and D9 also ensures a smooth upgrade further down the road.
  2. Option 2: delay your upgrade.
    1. Keep your existing Drupal 7 environment;
    2. Upgrade your PHP version;
    3. Get the Drupal 7 Maintenance Plan until you decide to upgrade your website to a newer version of Drupal. 

What does an upgrade from Drupal 7 to a newer version entail?

Regardless of your industry and the circumstances of your business, an investment in your digital transformation is imminent. The main question is one of timing: when is the right moment to accelerate your digitalization efforts? Are you launching a new brand, product or service in the near future? This is an excellent opportunity to start building a fully-fledged digital experience.

A Digital Experience Platform enables your teams to leverage the power of your data. Accurate statistics and monitoring allow you to discover new business insights and respond better to the needs of your visitors.

Are you planning to start catering to new target groups with your organization? Yet another use case that would benefit significantly from a Drupal upgrade. Using a newer version of Drupal, you can communicate in a highly personalized way with any target group.

Reasons for postponing your Drupal upgrade

There are two legitimate reasons why organizations decide to postpone their investment in a Drupal upgrade:

  • Your strategic roadmap for digital transformation is not ready yet or needs adjusting.

    Some organizations have completely overhauled their business model in 2020 and are looking to drastically alter or expand their digital plans. That is absolutely fine. If your digitalization roadmap needs further refinement, you shouldn’t compromise on the careful definition of your vision, mission and business objectives. In this case, ourDrupal 7 Maintenance Plan is the preferred alternative while you work on defining your strategy.

     
  • Your business model will not change in the coming months, but your organization needs financial resources.

    Due to the current economic volatility and uncertain business climate, many companies suffer from irregular cash flow. If the digital investment you had planned for is at risk, you might be better off postponing this high-impact project and instead opt for a small recurring investment in support for Drupal 7

Judging your Drupal 7 investment

As always, digital transformation is a business issue that is largely related to the direction your business is headed in the long term. The trade-off between limited maintenance fees and a much larger investment in an improved digital platform depends on your business case.

Are you prepared to keep using Drupal 7, despite maintenance costs slowly creeping up due to deprecated modules and components? And do you prioritize the definition of your digital strategy to delivering a more powerful digital experience in the short term? Then extended support is a perfectly legitimate choice.

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