Drupal 8. Its ready to fly

The introduction of Drupal 8 had many businesses and developers worried - concerned with how different the platform was and the learning curve that this presented. Even now Drupal 7 still boasts a loyal following, it’s familiarity provides a comfortable platform for those au-fait with its features. But the success of Drupal 7 should not prevent you from making the leap to its successor, rather it should be a springboard for successfully integrating Drupal 8 into your everyday working life.

Here’s why you shouldn't be afraid to migrate to Drupal 8 or start a new project on the newest version of the CMS.

The sooner you start; the sooner you’ll finish.

Holding off the transition to Drupal 8 is simply delaying the inevitable. If you intend to continue using Drupal and its features it’s not a case of ‘if I decide to upgrade’, it’s simply a case of ‘when’. Waiting provides no benefit. Getting your head round the subtle differences won’t get any easier the longer you hold off. It is true that your productivity may drop off slightly whilst you become fluent with it's intricacies, and deadlines and budgets may require a bit of revision, but the benefits of using the revised platform far outweigh the inconvenience of the transition period. And once you’ve mastered building with Drupal 8, you’ll find more flexibility - both financially and creatively - materialising in your workload.

Drupal 8 is Safer and More Secure

Now that the latest version of Drupal is freely distributed and widely used, it is this version that receives the company’s primary focus. Drupal haven’t invested huge resources into ensuring that their latest offering goes underutilised, therefore it is in their best interests to give Drupal 8 undivided attention. If you want the best security and support Drupal has to offer, then use Drupal 8. And incidentally, simply by using Drupal 8 you are supporting the company and helping to fund and drive future developments and improvements.

Any Previous Bugs or Instabilities Are Gone – Drupal is Now Ready

It’s not unusual to hold reservations about newly released development tools. Bugs are at best an inconvenience, and at worst, terminal to a project. The early adoption cycle sees the users themselves as guinea pigs, test pilots for the developers who attempt to quickly rectify any problems that inevitably occur, usually at the expense of those who need the program to work most. But Drupal was released in November 2015, nearly 2 years ago. That’s 2 years of constant development, in addition to numerous community maintained modules and rapid and consistent core updates. If it’s not fixed by now, then it probably wasn’t broken in the first place.

Only the Best has Survived

As with any major refresh or overhaul, only the strongest and most prominent features will have survived. Those that lagged behind have either been binned or brought in line with the rest of the modules. You can be confident that Drupal 8 only contains the best of the best.

It Will Continue to Get Better

The development doesn’t stop there. Whilst version 8 is currently the best version of Drupal on offer today, the evolution and progression continues apace. Drupal have taken care to port Workbench Moderation in core, allowing out of the box editorial workflows. And whilst these new features are currently marked as experimental, it’s an exciting insight into the new features regularly being added.

So that’s why we’re confident that there are no excuses for clinging onto old versions of Drupal. Embrace the change and enjoy the challenges and rewards that upgrading and integrating Drupal 8 will certainly bring.

At iNet Digital our developers started to work with Drupal 8 when the platform was still in development getting an early start on the steep learning curve that the new system posed. We built beta sites on Drupal 8 from the moment it was released so we have an in-depth understanding of how it works, how things have changed and how to build the best performing applications on it.