Content is one of the most valuable assets for your business, as it is an integral part of your digital experience. Therefore, the importance of implementing content management systems has been growing over the years rapidly.
The current scenario
The digital landscape is constantly changing, and so are the demands of the consumers. Organizations are pacing to meet these changing demands to achieve KPIs and business goals.
Consumers are looking for personalized experiences at every touchpoint they have been to with greater engagement and web experiences. According to a study by Salesforce, 66% of consumers expect brands to understand their needs, whereas, according to a report, 63% of consumers won't purchase from brands having poor personalization. These figures are sufficient to claim that personalization is a vital ingredient for marketers and businesses globally.
A vast majority of digital businesses have heavily invested in personalization. Moreover, they want to deliver fast omnichannel experiences to their consumers to stay ahead in this competitive curve.
Why is Drupal Porting essential?
Drupal has been in the limelight for quite a long time and has no plans to dust off the popularity of being a leading CMS in 2022. Drupal's capability to enable global businesses for effective content management and digital experience for years has helped this open-source, highly flexible platform to stand out in the market.
This enterprise-level CMS, with its digital experience platform (DXP) capabilities, is a powerful tool that offers web experience management, exceptional customer-centric and personalized experiences, multilingual capability, extensibility via APIs, and seamless integration with marketing tools, and SEO support. Therefore, Drupal's customer base includes big brands like Red Cross, Harvard, Government of Australia, BBC, Whole Foods, Cisco, and Twitter.
To provide advanced capabilities that cater to the rapidly changing customer demands, Drupal has introduced a new, updated version, Drupal 10, for efficiently building and managing websites. To leverage the benefits of this new version, it is important for businesses to roll out this updated version in their environments.
What's the buzz around Drupal 10?
The release of Drupal 10 version 10.0.0 is December 14, 2022. The release of beta versions of Drupal 9.5 and Drupal 10 are planned for the week of September 12, 2022. Drupal 10 is an upgraded version of Drupal 9 and is quite simple and cost-effective in Drupal history.
The primary goal of the Drupal team is to keep their CMS secure. So, if the components in Drupal 9 reach their EOL, then the need for an upgrade to mitigate the risks is essential. One of the main aims for pushing the Drupal 10 release in December is to give ample time to upgrade your websites and make them more secure. Apart from these, the main priorities of Drupal 10 initiatives are:
- To encourage, support, and help the contributed module maintainers to swiftly move to the updated modules.
- Focus on dependencies and remove deprecated APIs for Drupal 10.
As per the latest record on Drupal.org, the deprecation clean-up-related tickets are yet to be closed. To know more about Drupal 10 porting issues, check here.
For module-specific issues follow the steps below:
- Choose the module if you want to search module specific issue
- Start with the project: drupal.org/project/<project name>, like https://www.drupal.org/project/pathauto
- In the right sidebar, look for the “All issues” link: https://www.drupal.org/project/issues/pathauto?categories=All
- If there are loads of issues, then search for “Automated Drupal 10 compatibility fixes” - https://www.drupal.org/project/issues/search?text=Automated+Drupal+10+compatibility+fixes&projects=Pathauto
The Noteworthy Drupal 10 Features
The new version of Drupal will be more accessible to new users with a significant change in frontend and backend appearances and an easy-to-use interface with exceptional expandability. Moreover, the updated version of Symphony, i.e., Symphony 6, takes the credit for initiating Drupal 10. Apart from this, Drupal developers will get a new starterkit that will change the way to create themes in Drupal 10. Also, Drupal 10 will be equipped with refreshed JS components, replacing JQuery UI. Other features that Drupal 10 will house:
- Claro administration theme catering to the latest design standards.
- WCAG-AA compliant Olivero frontend theme to give a visual treat to the users for modern appearances.
- CKEditor 5 offers a better authoring experience in Drupal 10 and great opportunities to integrate with modern technologies like Angular, React, etc.,
- Decoupled Menus- To allow a quick update of menus from the administration panel.
- Automatic Updates for security and Drupal's core updates.
- The built-in module browser in Drupal 10 will allow users to search and install modules from the administration panel, making it more accessible to new users.
- Updated layout builder and media functionality.
How to be Drupal 10 ready?
Drupal 7 Users:
The EOL of Drupal 7 is November 2023. Currently, 55.2% of Drupal websites are on Drupal 7. There are chances that Drupal 10 will have tools that will help in migrating from Drupal 7 to 10.
But, rather than waiting that long, you should consider migrating to Drupal 9, because most of the contributed modules that you are currently using will be available in D9. Doing this will make the transition to D10 easier as most of the modules from D9 will be ported to Drupal 10.
Drupal 8 Users:
The EOL of Drupal 8 was on November 2, 2021, and has no longer official support, and there are still 17.5% of websites on Drupal 8. Therefore, Drupal 9 migration is crucial as soon as possible to avoid any major security risks and then to Drupal 10 after its official release. The Drupal 8 to Drupal 9 migration isn't complicated as it didn't have significant differences. Also, you can refer to the official documentation to migrate to Drupal 9 or use the Upgrade Status Module.
Drupal 9 Users:
If you are already on Drupal 9, keep yourself updated. You can use Rector or Upgrade Status to check your website and estimate the amount of work required to update to Drupal 10. Currently, there are 23.6% of websites on Drupal 9. There may be some modules in Drupal 9 that will be incompatible with Drupal 10. You can plan your Drupal 10 migration process with technical experts either by using Composer or by doing it manually.
So, what's next in Drupal 10 porting?
Get ready to port Drupal 9 projects (Modules and Themes) to Drupal 10. This porting will help to tackle the compatibility issues with the latter.
When is the Drupal 10 porting event?
The first global Drupal 10 porting day is starting on 28th July 2022. This event will last 30 hours, covering all time zones till 30th July 2022.
Time Zone Conversions for reference:
Pacific Time Zone
28th July 2022, 15:00 PST
30th July 2022, 21:00 PST
Eastern Time Zone
28th July 2022, 18:00 EST
30th July 2022, 00:00 EST
Coordinated Universal Time Zone
28th July 2022, 22:00 UTC
30th July 2022, 04:00 UTC
Central Europe Time Zone
28th July 2022, 00:00 CET
30th July 2022, 06:00 CET
India Time Zone
28th July 2022, 03:30 IST
30th July 2022, 09:30 IST
Eastern Australia Time Zone
28th July 2022, 08:00 AEST
30th July 2022, 14:00 AEST
Who can participate in this event?
This event welcomes organizers, mentors, programmers, testers, Project Managers, Maintainers, and Promoters.
Note: You don't have to hold experience in porting modules/themes. If you've experience creating modules or themes, you are welcome to participate.
Are Mentors available?
Yes. Mentors are available for this porting event and will monitor the #d10readiness Slack channel for questions and requests for help in their time zones. You are also free to become a Mentor for this event. All you have to do is signup here.
What are the different tags to be used during this event?
The different tags are
- Drupal 10 porting day & Drupal 10 compatibility(if not already tagged): Use these for issue tags without changing the case.
- #Drupal10PortingDay: Use this tag on Twitter and other Social Media. Note: Please see if the alphabet case is appropriate while using the tag.
Who is participating from Srijan?
Surabhi Gokte, the Author of the blog, is a Community Manager at Srijan and is one of the event organizers, along with Kristen Pol for the Drupal 10 Porting event.
We are excited to participate in this event and hope the same from you too! Some of the contributors from Srijan participating are Immaculate X, Technical Lead (L1), and Rashmi Soni, Technical Lead (L1) as the Mentors, and Vinmayi Swamy, Viraj Rajankar, and Harpreet would be joining too.
In a nutshell,
Start preparing your website for the Drupal 10 release, especially if you are on Drupal 7 and 8 versions. If you need assistance in identifying website complexity and estimating the work required to update and migrate to Drupal's latest version, then we can help you. Reach us for more information.
