Drupal 8 has become the all-new standard to create immersive digital experience that converts casual visitors into loyal customers. This new version carries 200 exciting features and improvements over its older versions. The upgrade includes a powerful suite of tools that may become one of the strongest links within a content supply chain. This newest version of open-source CMS is completely rewritten, and that is what sets it apart from Drupal 7. But should a website built on an older version of Drupal migrate to this new version? Well, let us find out.

When Is It Good To Replace Drupal 7 With Drupal 8?

Building Mobile-Friendly Web Properties

Drupal 8 is considered to be a crucial upgrade. There is now a full-fledged admin app that allows access from mobile devices, so any change can be made on the go. Furthermore, every module that is included in the Drupal core is responsive and builds mobile-friendly experience for end-users. This fresh mobility, given to Drupal, is vital for creating the best UX for the digital world.

Improving Localization Options

Drupal is used by a larger set of international audiences, and that has led to the addition of a number of localization and translation options. This strategic move in Drupal development has accelerated the growth of Drupal 8 in a number of upcoming markets; these marketplaces are generally dominated by non-native English speakers and by all those who run translation services or create projects that are not in English. So any improvement in transliteration and translation modules easily allows the developers and clients to create localized content for a specified target market.

Streamlining Content Creation And Management

Drupal 8 is a user-friendly and centralized CMS that lets users develop and manage content easily. By simplifying the content creation and management, Drupal has emerged as an ideal option for those users who are not tech savvy. Now, moving and viewing media files in this CMS have become easier than ever. Also, the field can be changed, cropped, and resized as images and media content are placed within Drupal. This system has made its production and development environments content friendly, and that is a welcome benefit for all those content creators who lack the needed technical expertise.

Maintaining A Wide Developer Community

Waterwheel, which is developed by a SaaS company, is a specific module that is built on Drupal. This module allows JavaScript to be natively written inside this new version of the CMS. Such a cross-platform language use can potentially open new doors for crossover development within this CMS. Also, leveraging Symphony inside its framework expands Drupal’s dedicated development community.

Taking The Performance To The Next Level

Drupal’s legacy connections to web-based applications optimize the framework to be used on the internet. Having the upgrades to nearly all the existing modules and introducing a fresh one, BigPipe module, Drupal 8 has taken its performance to the next level. The BigPipe module breaks the webpage into non-static and static elements and even prioritizes the pages that need to be load first. All of this tweaking results in considerably improving the load times.

Enhancing The Usability

The 8th version of Drupal is much better than the 7th in terms of usability and backend interfaces. The users may find this version dynamic and simple to use. However, Drupal 8 should always be used for creating full-fledged websites from small to medium to large especially when the user lacks specific coding knowledge.

Introducing the powerful WYSIWYG

This is the very first time when a Drupal’s version is carrying a robust WYSIWYG. With an extremely powerful and efficient WYSIWYG by its side, Drupal 8 can tap into the power of a fully customized drag-and-drop feature that replaces the toolbar. Yet another potential that WYSIWYG has is that it can directly edit the content on the page itself.

Experiencing The Future Of Drupal

Drupal 8 is the future of this CMS. With time, this CMS will become even more powerful and will be filled with all kinds of development possibilities. Drupal 8 is yet to receive some fresh patches, modules, and updates that will make it move away from Drupal 7.

When Is It Good To Skip The Upgrade?

Slower Development Cycle

The technology is relatively new when compared with Drupal 7, so its development cycle is not completely evolved yet. Also, right now, there are not many people having extensive experience of working on Drupal 8. So it is challenging to find the right team to train in-house developers. This talent gap can easily slow down the development cycle from the beginning.

An Expensive Option

More Drupal developers are familiar with the modules of Drupal 7, but they are not experts on this newest version of the CMS. Drupal 7 is in the market for nearly a year and a half now, so developers are more knowledgeable to work on this version than the new one. They know exactly how to customize this CMS to build awesome digital experience for the end-users. And even if there is a team to train in-house developers in Drupal 8, it will be costly because of the huge knowledge gap and its high demand.

A Less Robust Framework

Although Drupal 8 has received many core modules from Drupal 7, it is yet to be completely evolved. Drupal 8 still needs tons of modifications out of the box for fully unlocking its potential. The content and modules are still getting developed for Drupal 8, so enterprises can expect the core to be more enriched and functional in the coming time.

Migration Comes With Its Headaches

This is one of the common complaints given by many enterprises that have shifted to Drupal 8 without being fully prepared. It can look appealing to just flip a switch and use the newest version of the CMS, but the reality can be filled with pain. If a business is having smaller web development projects and applications running on Drupal, then the upgrade might be free of any hassles. However, for every big-sized business using sophisticated programs and enterprise-grade applications on Drupal, migration surely becomes expensive and time consuming.

All The Popular Drupal 7 Modules Shifted To Drupal 8 Core

What has been the best part of Drupal 8 is that all the popular modules available in Drupal 7 have been migrated to this latest version. Some of these key modules are mentioned below.

The Bottom Line

So a business’s decision to build a website on Drupal 8 will depend on its team, digital needs, budget, and timelines. If an enterprise has the financial resources to invest in Drupal 8, then this new version of CMS is the right choice. Nevertheless, for any small- or mid-sized business that is largely reliant on its website built on Drupal 7, it should not make the upgrade so soon.