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Drupal is a content management system and web development platform, one of the many software options that help businesses manage the look, structure, and content of their website. From the text box where you write your blog articles to posting lead gen forms, Drupal is how a website is created. Come June 3, 2020, Drupal will release the latest ready to use version, Drupal 9. Here’s what businesses need to know.

Changes

As with any software release, there are adjustments in the code that can affect how a software looks, feels, and runs. These are the important changes to know about the upcoming Drupal 9 changes.

The Update Will Have Minimal Disruptions

While this is the 9th full version of Drupal, structurally it’s not much different from the 8.8 and 8.9 versions. You can also expect the majority of Drupal 8 modules and features to work the same due to 9's backward compatibility. If you’ve been updating your backend software regularly as you should, the switch should be seamless.

The Update Will Include Security Updates

The older a software is, the more time hackers have had to learn its weaknesses. Drupal 9 includes fortifying or removing unsecured parts of previous versions to keep websites safer.

The Update Will Strip Depreciated Drupal 8 Code

As code gets updated, some of it is depreciated and not needed for new features. This can be a concern if your Drupal is older (8.2 or less) and you update to Drupal 9 because there may be features you relied on that are no longer supported or outright gone. If you’re more than eight updates behind, we recommend having a Drupal expert help you update your website. They can update your website to the most recent software and make sure nothing breaks in the process.

The Update Will Remove Modules

PlaceBlocks and Simple Test, modules that aid in web design, already received minimal updates and will finally be removed from Drupal in the new update to be replaced with better options.

The Update Will Have No New Features

Drupal 9 is intended to update the code supporting the core of the software, not enhance its abilities. Additional features are planned to be added in the 9.1 update, scheduled for winter 2020.

Environment

Drupal 9 requires your website to have a particular environment to run properly. Here are the minimum versions of software you’ll need to run Drupal 9, depending on what language your website uses:

• Apache 2.4.7
• PHP 7.3
• MySQL/Percona 5.7.8
• MariaDB 10.3.7
• SQLite 3.26
• PostgreSQL 10 with the pg_trgm extension
• Druch 10

It should also be noted Drupal 9 is expected to work the latest version of Symphony and Twig.

We recommend updating your website to Drupal 9 in the next coming months. Older versions, Drupal 7 and Drupal 8, will be supported until November 2021, but it would be best to switch to Drupal 9 as soon as you can. The upcoming Drupal changes will help your website, cleaning code to make it faster and more secure. All things you, and your customers, should expect your website to be.