Drupal 8 Turns One

As Drupal 8 nears its first birthday next week, let’s take the opportunity to reflect on its year and check in on how it’s been adopted and received. Drupal 8 is the first new version of Drupal in over five years and it represented a significant rethinking of the platform. Drupal is at a pivotal moment. In order to justify upgrading to Drupal 8, the Drupal community is relying on the good faith and trust of its over one million users to commit to their investment in the platform for the next 3-5 years. Drupal “has been a Lego box for site builders and developers, enabling complex use-cases via a mature and sophisticated module ecosystem.” In fact, the last major update of Drupal, version 6, barely saw any adoption until at least six months following its release when the module ecosystem caught up. Where Drupal 7 is well-defined and will provide your organization with a stable platform for four to five more years, Drupal 8 is still maturing but will extend your lifecycle well beyond what most organizations would ever consider reasonable for a CMS. As the chart below shows, it has taken a similar amount of time for Drupal 8 to gain some traction, but there is a clear upward trajectory as it nears the end of its first year -- something that has been typical of previous releases as well.   Now that Drupal 8 has been in the market for a year and the module ecosystem has had an opportunity to develop, companies are generally in the phase where they’re looking for the budget to upgrade. Also,

This is the time when people focus on learning Drupal 8 and its new features. This is when the modules that extend and enhance Drupal need to be ported to Drupal 8; and this is the time when Drupal shops and builders are deep in the...sales cycle it takes to sell Drupal 8 projects. This is often a phase of uncertainty but all of this is happening now, and every day there is less and less uncertainty.

According to a recent survey of Drupal users, learning Drupal 8 is the most common factor that holds companies back from upgrading -- second only to the need for specific modules or themes to be updated:   One of the greatest strengths of the Drupal is that it’s open-source and the development community is willing to share their knowledge with other users. As well, agencies, such as ImageX, that specialize in Drupal development can help prepare and guide your organization along the upgrade path. If you’re considering the move to Drupal 8, reach out to us today!