Drupal 9 is coming. Even if it feels like you only just upgraded to Drupal 8, soon it’ll be time to make the switch to the next version. Fortunately, the shift from Drupal 8 to Drupal 9 should be relatively painless for most organizations. Here’s why.

A little background

Though tools were built in to make the upgrade from Drupal 6 or 7 to Drupal 8 run as smoothly as possible, it could still be a difficult or dramatic process. Drupal 8 marked a major shift for the Drupal world: it introduced major new dependencies, such as Symfony, and a host of new features in Core. The new structure of the software made it tricky to upgrade sites in the first place, which was complicated by the fact that it took a long time for a number of modules to be properly optimized and secured for the new version.

Drupal 9: A natural extension of Drupal 8

Fortunately, the large number of changes made to the Drupal platform in Drupal 8 have made it relatively simple to build, expand, and upgrade for the future. The new software has been designed specifically to make it simple to transition between Drupal 8 and Drupal 9, so that making the migration requires little more work than upgrading between minor version of Drupal 8.

In fact, as Dries Buytaert (the founder and project lead of Drupal) wrote recently in a blog on Drupal.org:

Instead of working on Drupal 9 in a separate codebase, we are building Drupal 9 in Drupal 8. This means that we are adding new functionality as backwards-compatible code and experimental features. Once the code becomes stable, we deprecate any old functionality.

Planning for Drupal 9

As more information is released about the new features and updates in Drupal 9, organizations should consider their digital roadmaps and how the new platform will affect them. And regardless of what your plans are feature-wise, your organization should begin planning to upgrade to Drupal 9 no later than summer of 2021. The reason for that is because the projected end-of-life for the Drupal 8 software is November of 2021, when Symfony 3 (Drupal 8’s largest major dependency) will no longer be supported by its own community.

In the meantime, the best thing your organization can do to prepare for the launch of Drupal 9 is to make sure that you keep your Drupal 8 site fully up to date.

For help planning out your Drupal roadmap, and to make sure that you’ll be ready for a smooth upgrade to Drupal 9 when it releases, contact FFW. We’re here to help you plan out your long-term Drupal strategy and make sure that your team can make the most of your site today, tomorrow, and after Drupal 9 is released.