Drupal 7 End of Life Date Pushed Back to 11/28/2022
Earlier today (June 24th, 2020), Drupal.org announced that they’re pushing back the end of life (or eol) date for Drupal 7 to 11/28/2022. This does not affect the Drupal 8 end of life date.
Per Drupal.org, Drupal 8 will still be end-of-life on 11/2/2021 because technology that Drupal 8 is built on – Symfony 3 – is also reaching its end of life on that date.
Why is Drupal 7 EOL Getting Pushed Back?
The primary cause here is “the impact of COVID-19 on budgets and businesses,” according to the Drupal security team.
What does this mean for Drupal 7 security?
This extended life line means more work will be required from the Drupal community and other maintainers of this version of the CMS. The Drupal security team will continue to take security measures like:
- Reviewing security reports,
- Creating patches, and
- Releasing security advisories
This means that if you’re managing a website using this version of Drupal you’re getting more time before site security becomes a pressing issue while budgets recover thanks to the community support.
What does this mean for my Drupal site?
For Drupal 7 site owners
You can continue running your site and receive the security updates as normal. However, there are still many reasons to upgrade from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 ASAP, including opportunities to dramatically improve your user experience and other new features.
Getting from Drupal 7 to Drupal 9 is still a big jump. There are major differences in the Drupal core, but skilled Drupal developers can still help you migrate.
The best course of action, for most site owners, is to continue to prepare to upgrade to Drupal 8. This helps you ensure the upgrade path for Drupal 9.
Additionally, you should review the steps for upgrading from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8.
For Drupal 8 site owners
Your site’s end of life date has not changed. Drupal 8 is still end of life on 11/2/2021, before Drupal 7.
Getting from Drupal 8 to Drupal 9 will still be relatively straight forward. As far as version upgrades go, this is an easy upgrade thanks to efforts Dries Buytaert and his team made.
How to support the Drupal community
From the first release of Drupal and across every major version afterwards, the success and power of the open source CMS has been attributed to the Drupal community and their history of long term support.
Maintaining a Drupal version is not easy. This continuation of support for Drupal 7 puts more strain on the open source Drupal community and the Drupal security team.
Now is a great time, if possible, to support the end-of-life extension and the maintainers of Drupal 7 by donating to Drupal security programs.
Have questions?
Don’t hesitate to reach out. We have a deep bench of Drupal experts and business strategists who can help you plot the best course of action for your website.
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