You can stick with drupal 6 but that is like driving in an unknown path. You may run into a dead-end at any point of time. Here is some advice on how to avoid it and the advantages of updating your Drupal website.
Drupal 6 development has almost stopped!
After the end-of-life for Drupal 6 is announced, the Drupal community has stopped developing more for Drupal 6 and are currently concentrating on Drupal 7 and higher versions. So, there would be hardly anymore contributed modules developed for Drupal 6. Obviously, if you need a new feature for your Drupal 6 website and you see that is possible in Drupal 7 or 8, you have to custom code it !
No more Support for Drupal 6
It has been officially announced at drupal.org that the life of Drupal 6 comes to an end on 24th of February, 2016. You can read the official announcement here. This means that Drupal 6 will no longer be supported by the Drupal community. No more issues will be fixed and no more security patches or security updates would be released for the modules and themes of Drupal 6.
Availability of security patches after the release of Drupal 8
Drupal 8 has been released on 19th of November, 2016. It does not mean that there won’t be any support for Drupal 7 hereafter. The Drupal community would continue to release updates and security patches for Drupal 7. Also, new contributed modules for Drupal 7 will continue to be released.
Okay, what’s the next step? Drupal 7 or Drupal 8?
For this, you need to consider the following –
- Understand the importance of the upgrade and what it means for your site.
- Review your Drupal 6 contributed modules and see if they are available in higher versions of Drupal.
- Review your custom modules and consult a programmer to analyze its porting to Drupal 7 or 8.
- Plan your website enhancements like improving design or adding new features (if you have any in mind).
A few of several advantages that you will have if you upgrade to Drupal 7 or 8.
- Improved admin UI – The administration UI is much more easy and usable as Drupal 8 comes in a way that is much more easy to access.
- Mobile friendly – Drupal 8’s admin themes are mobile ready and are perfectly responsive to all devices. This will help you a lot when you need to manage your website through your mobile devices.
- Quick edit – Drupal 8 offers quick edit feature that enables one to edit the content in certain pages on the front-end itself. One does not have to click edit and go to the backend to edit and save it. Content can be edited on-the-go!
So, with the Drupal 6’s end-of-life, it would be a wiser option to migrate your website over to Drupal 7 or 8 and stay updated and safe!
Are you still on a Drupal 6 website, contact us today for a free consultation and a free site audit !
