Drupal 10 is scheduled to release in 2022.
Organizations, globally, in their quest to deliver richer, highly immersive web experiences, seek the best performing and feature-rich applications. Innovation happens every day in the Content Management System space. So, bringing your organization up to speed with the latest, cutting-edge tech is the easiest way to deliver uninterrupted and seamless experiences to your customers.
In November 2021, Drupal 8 reached its end-of-life (EOL). Drupal 7 was launched in 2011 and it has been quite a successful run. However, EOL for this version is also scheduled for November 2022.
EOL means that Drupal will stop lending support and updates, including security patches to the above-mentioned versions, right after the announced dates. Upgrading to Drupal 9 is the right move forward for now, but what Drupal 10 has in store for its users will surely pique your interest.
So, let’s dive into what’s new in the world of Drupal.
Why Drupal Still Rules the Roost
Drupal is one of the best open-source CMS distributions and has more than one million users. Its no-buyer lock-in, easy-to-use interface, intelligent design, and custom-grade features make Drupal a default choice for many developers and organizations across the world.
Drupal not only wins the CMS popularity contest but also packs quite a punch with its built-in features. Since the UX of Drupal 9 differs hugely from that of Drupal 7, certain businesses are hesitant to jump on the Drupal 9 bandwagon. However, in terms of technical specifications and flexibility alone, Drupal 9 is still one of the top CMSes in the world right now.
With Drupal 7 and 8 fast approaching EOL, you can upgrade to either Drupal 9 or even Drupal 10. If you are curious to learn what Drupal 10 can bring to the table for your organization, then read on.
Drupal 10: A Change for the Better
Drupal 10 should be available in the next 9 to 14 months. A late 2022 release can be expected, based on the progress revealed by Dries Buytaert in his State of Drupal Presentation (October 2021). There are many new, innovative features that are being lined up for Drupal 10. Let’s take a closer look:
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- Project Browser
The Project Browser initiative, first introduced in this year’s earlier State of Drupal presentation, showcased the idea of how to make it easy for site builders to find and install modules right from their Drupal site. An intelligent app store type interface to find specific or particular modules easily would make using Drupal even more delightful. Though development for this feature is yet to begin, it is on Dries’ wishlist for Drupal 10. - Decoupled Menus
What makes Drupal a dependable CMS is that it provides support for REST, JSON, and GraphQL APIs. With Drupal 10, the plan is to expand the number of web service endpoints on offer, allowing you to build a large repository of web components and JavaScript framework integrations. Drupal 10 hopes to achieve this through the Decoupled Menus feature. This feature can be used to create a small web component that ships quickly and solves a common use case.
By building more web service endpoints and JavaScript components, Drupal's leadership can considerably extend both headless development and composability. Thus, Drupal can continue to remain one of the most powerful and flexible tools for developers.
- Effortlessly Out-of-the-Box
Another exciting feature on Drupal 10’s wishlist is to have an easy out-of-the-box experience. This initiative is planned around adding Layout Builder, Media, and Claro to the Standard Profile and making these features enabled by default for any new Drupal user. However, since this feature is a work-in-progress, we are not sure if it will be made available in Drupal 10.
- Automatic Updates
With Automatic Updates, the goal is to make it substantially easier to update Drupal sites. With all applications and functionalities, software vulnerabilities occur; if left unchecked, such vulnerabilities lead to security issues. By enabling automatic updates, Drupal users can keep their sites secure and enhance their user experience.
This initiative has made great progress, so much so that a working development version of Automatic Updates is publicly available. This feature is most likely to be part of Drupal 10.
- Drupal 10 Readiness
The focus of Drupal 10 Readiness has been on upgrading third-party components that Drupal depends on. Since Drupal supports APIs, third-party components come into play more often than not. To provide ample support and offer seamless integration at all times is the goal with Drupal 10.
The exciting part is that upgrading to Drupal 10 will be the easiest ever. The credit for this should go to the careful management of deprecated code and continued investment in Rector. Upgrading modules from Drupal 9 to Drupal 10 will be almost entirely automated. This would exceed the expectations of Drupal users, making it nearly a 300% improvement, compared to the Drupal 7 to Drupal 9 upgrade.
- New Front-end Theme
Saving the best for last; the new front-end theme, Olivero, has neared the completion stage. Drupal 10 will surely feature Olivero, as a lot of effort has gone into ensuring that it is fully accessible and consistent with Drupal’s commitment to accessibility.
The new theme is low-vision accessible. No issues are expected with contrast, focus, or scaling, and with the forms being created well, it will make it easy for users to navigate and find content.
Drupal 10 - The CMS Juggernaut Rolls On
Drupal 10 is not just about new and improved features. It is also about developer contributions to the Drupal community and associated projects. As a result, Drupal has always encouraged and appreciated developers and their contributions. For example, Drupal has adopted GitLab to make it easier for developers to contribute to the Drupal community and projects.
“Since many developers outside the Drupal ecosystem are accustomed to using tools, such as GitLab, allowing them to use tools with which they are already familiar is an important step to attracting new contributors.” - Dries Buytaert
By keeping the open-source narrative in play, Drupal hopes to engage developers outside the Drupal ecosystem. The give and take relationship that Drupal enjoys with developers globally is what makes applications of this scale function better. As we move to better and more exciting things, Drupal wants to ensure that the entire developer community grows with them. With Drupal 10, they hope to achieve just that.
Learn more about where you stand in terms of Drupal 9 readiness to be fully equipped for what Drupal 10 offers. Time is of the essence, so get in touch with us right away.
