8 Reasons to Upgrade to Drupal 8

Written by Glenn HodgkinsonApril 22, 2020

Drupal is a free and open-source content management framework that can be extended and customized to create a secure and scalable solution for your digital needs. Drupal has always been a powerhouse for managing content and creating customized digital experiences.

Drupal 8 takes it further by wrapping up even more power and flexibility in a much more user-friendly experience. Drupal is more secure, scalable, and flexible than ever. Here are eight areas which make Drupal 8 an easy choice when considering upgrading your current Drupal 7 site.

#1 Usability & Flexibility

A new streamlined and intuitive editing experience including inline editing, draft workflows, and a fancy new Gutenberg editor. All of this whilst enhancing permissions, accessibility, and search engine optimization.
A flexible page layout builder allows site administrators to easily create customized layouts or pick from a predefined list of layout options.
An enhanced media gallery finally gives Drupal site administrators the ability to easily manage a variety of media types including images, PDF’s, and videos.

#2 Mobile First

Drupal 8 is fully responsive out-of-the-box; with elements like menus, blocks, and images that will automatically reflow to work and look good on any screen size.
Offers a mobile-friendly toolbar that makes it easier for admins to manage content from their mobile devices.

#3 Upgrade Migration Plan

Upgrading to a new version of Drupal (like Drupal 6 to Drupal 7) used to require an entire rebuild which can be time consuming and expensive. However, starting with Drupal 8, that process changes and while upgrading from D7 to D8 will still need a major effort, you won’t need to rebuild when a new version of the platform comes out moving forward.
Drupal 8 offers monthly bug fixes and security releases (for example, 8.0.1, 8.0.2, etc.) and semi-annual minor releases of Drupal core (so 8.1.0, 8.2.0 and so on), so if there is a bug, or if a certain module isn’t working in the latest version, you won’t have to wait years for the new version to be released.
Modules are compatible between immediate major versions.

#4 Future Proofing

Drupal 8 makes it possible to access your content beyond the confines of a traditional screen and enables you to create and deliver content to any channel, device or application.
Easier to share your content with mobile apps, voice recognition devices like Google Home or Amazon’s Alexa & IOT devices (like your smart fridge, for example).

#5 Broad Support for HTML5

The increased clarity and simplicity of HTML5 coding in Drupal 8 makes it easier to write web markup.
Theme based templates for writing HTML5 code that could help even amateur web designers (no more PHP skills needed for templating...yay!).

#6 Loads Fast

Drupal 8 based websites cache every entity and download Javascript only when required. Once a page has been viewed, there is no further requirement to download it again. The content seen previously will be quickly presented through the cache. This process remains automatic once it is configured perfectly and runs smoothly.

#7 A More Secure CMS

Drupal 8 offers more crucial built-in functionality than any prior version. This is crucial to website security because core modules have a much higher level of scrutiny than community contributed modules do.
Being in core means passing a much stricter review process before being added, and with many more eyeballs on the code. Drupal core updates are released regularly.

#8 Multilingual Capability is now Built in

The ability to create multilingual sites has its own core initiative.
Site and content translations are easier to configure in Drupal 8 compared to prior versions of Drupal.

Drupal 8 was released over three years ago and to date there are over 7,000 contributed modules available for Drupal 8 - so there is no better time than now to upgrade your Drupal site.

Need some assistance in doing so? Connect with our team today!