Drupal 8 is here! (You need a new site!)

#Celebr8D8 with @texascreative developers @To_Be_Benji & @jvative. pic.twitter.com/LM1E2IcvX5

— Art Williams (@ArtisWilliams) November 20, 2015

Inevitably, if you are a Drupal-based agency, and have been around for awhile, with the trumpeted release of Drupal 8, you will get some variation of the following questions:

Client: “You tell me my site is on Drupal 7, and that you keep it up to date, but I see that Drupal 8 is out … what!? And why do I need to rebuild a ‘new’ site to get on Drupal 8?”

You: “Good question Mr. Client! I’m so glad you asked!”

Let’s start with a very brief history of the magic that is Drupal 7 (hereafter referred to lovingly as D7). D7 was originally released in 2011. At the time it was released, it was immediately an incredible and powerful tool to build wonderful websites with. D7 solidly established its place as a website powerhouse, and a robust alternative to the likes of WordPress, Joomla, and others. However, we in the industry can attest to you that web technologies and standards, both on the front and back-end, have drastically evolved since that time. D7 does indeed receive a steady stream of updates, however these are security patches and ‘bug’ fixes, and not functionality upgrades.

In fact, in referencing this very thing, and on the release of Drupal 8 (D8) the great Larry Garfield makes the following point:

“I’m happy that all of the changes we’ve made have enabled Drupal to switch to a more traditional, predictable, stable release schedule. Drupal has never really had feature releases before; we’ve had bug fixes, and API-breaking majors, but our architecture has never really supported non-breaking improvements before, at least not on a large scale. Now it can, and we’re now shifting our development culture to support it, too. That makes an investment in Drupal 8, and in helping to develop Drupal 8 itself, much more valuable than ever before.”

Times, they are a-changin have drastically changed!

The platform we are working with in D7 is almost 5 years old! In terms of technology, that’s ancient! You wouldn’t expect the original iPhone to do all of the things your shiny new iPhone 6S can do, would you? Of course not! That said, D7 is still entirely relevant, and we will support your site like crazy Mr. Client! But, we will always be limited by the core technologies and underlying code used when D7 was released.

Drupal 8 is an evolution of the platform and has been coded using modern, cutting-edge web technologies. D8 is architected in such a way as to have landed squarely in the ‘now’, with a clear pathway and vision for the future (of the platform, and web development) in ways that are not possible on the previous versions of Drupal. It will be faster and more flexible than D7 can ever be.

So what you’re saying is … ?

Drupal 8 ensures that a site will be built using industry standard web languages, providing the modern web browsing experience you and your visitors expect. Building your ‘new’ site on D8 means that your website/application can grow with you in ways never possible before. You can rest assured that your site will be ready for the future, and as the industry and technology changes, you won’t be left behind.

And that Mr. Client, is why Drupal 8 is the way forward!