Know Why and How to Upgrade to Drupal 10

Drupal will develop a version upgrade by the middle of next year. Many tools are in place to ensure a smooth transition to the new upgraded version. However, web admins must be aware of the various prerequisites they must consider for the upgrade. This article will discuss the background of the upgrade and why and how you should upgrade to Drupal 10.

Businesses increasingly focus on their websites as the base for their audience outreach. Therefore, there is a need to ensure that the sites are feature-rich and secure underlying data. Drupal is among the CMS that several businesses use. The CMS has continuously upgraded its features to improve its framework and other objectives.

Why was the Release of Drupal 10 Inevitable?

The upgraded Drupal 10 will be released anytime between June and November 2022. While any delay is unexpected, there has been continuous innovation, numerous integrations with third parties, and various new technologies have also come up. What is intriguing is that the waiting time between earlier major upgrades of Drupal was quite far apart. For example, the upgrade from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 took place after five years.

The applications that Drupal depends on can have a significant version upgrade that can break backward compatibility for Drupal. For example, the critical dependencies are PHP, CKEditor, Symfony, Composer, etc. Support will stop whenever these applications reach their end of life, and addressing security issues will no longer be possible. Therefore, it becomes necessary for Drupal to adopt the new versions.

What are the New Features in Drupal 10?

The upgrade to Drupal 10 will ensure automated updates, improved user experience, along with several other feature additions.

There will be several upgrades in the third-party software associated with Drupal. These components will be more secure, user-friendly, and powerful. Some key upgrades are:

• Symfony 4 to Symfony 5 or 6
• PHP 7 to PHP 8
• CKEditor 4 to CKEditor 5
• Composer 1 to Composer 2

Furthermore, there are plans to discontinue Internet Explorer 11 and replace the jQuery UI with other modern JavaScript components.

Website upgrades will become more accessible through automation tools. For example, developers can confirm that early upgrades mainly removed the deprecated code. Automating the upgrade activities will be possible.

In Drupal 10, site builders can directly search and install modules from the admin dashboard. It can also use DrupalPod – a new methodology to create a development environment on the cloud. Finally, the tool can install the modules by itself. 

Various components, like the Claro theme, Layout Builder, and the Media Library, will be available out of the box. These modules allow the web admins and developers to manage content, use the admin interface and design creative page layouts with ease.

The more modern Olivero theme will be the front-end by default for Drupal websites. In addition, there will be new workflows to design custom themes, and there will be a new StarterKit theme tool in the new Drupal 10.

What can you Expect When you Upgrade to Drupal 10?

The Drupal 10 Readiness Initiative looks forward to the stability of the underlying components and covers enhancements contributed by the global community. The new upgrade can make Drupal more user-friendly and help formulate flexible digital experiences for the audience. The focus is on devising stable components for a robust and secure framework for next-generation websites.

The design of Drupal 10 is on Drupal 9 along with new functionalities. All the minor releases up to Drupal 9.4.0 are backwards compatible. It will help to upgrade the website with future upgrades with ease. When the upgrade happens, removal of the deprecated code will occur, and the dependencies will get updated automatically.

Getting ready for Drupal 10

The websites on an earlier version of Drupal must upgrade to Drupal 9 very soon. With the end of life of Drupal 8 in November, there has been no other option but to move to Drupal 9. There are websites in Drupal 7, too, and the end of life is in November 2022.

Websites on an older version cannot leverage the benefits of newer modules and miss out on the unique features of the later versions. However, upcoming upgrades of PHP and MySQL will make the switch to Drupal 10 a necessity. Several tools can help you switch to Drupal 10. Using Rector can make the upgrade easier for developers. 

The switch to Drupal 10 aims to have a more user-friendly CMS and a more straightforward maintenance process for developers. In addition, the new release can design unique digital experiences as the developers use their creativity backed up by advanced technologies.

How to Upgrade to Drupal 10?

Reports suggest that the move to Drupal 10 will be easier than the upgrade to Drupal 9. It will be more automated, and the turnaround time will be lesser. If you are still on Drupal 7, you must quickly upgrade to Drupal 9. The Drupal 8 websites must have upgraded to Drupal 9 by now. Also, you must update to the latest version of Drupal 9. The contributed modules must be updated too, which will help remove the deprecations that may be existing. 

The switch to Drupal 10 from Drupal 9 will be smoother because of fewer minor versions and faster iterations. The steps to follow for the upgrade will be like what you did during the upgrade to Drupal 9. The experts must keep the core updated, and the contributed modules must be compatible with Drupal 10. The customized code must be deprecated as well.

You must keep the website ready for the switch now, such that it becomes easier for you when the upgraded version is available. The Drupal Rector application can help automate the process of removing the deprecations. The Upgrade Status module can help find the deprecations to fix them. You can estimate the amount of effort you will need for the upgrade. The PHPStan Drupal module is a static code analysis mechanism and is an essential component of the upgrade tools. It analyses the code for deprecations. Finally, you can use the Drupal Check module to check the static code for deprecations.

Initial information suggests that everything isn’t dark for websites still on Drupal 7. While the end of life for Drupal 7 is in November 2022, the upgrade to Drupal 10 must be pre-planned. You can expect that Drupal 10 will have migration tools for Drupal 7, but all the contributed modules may not be available immediately. The best way is to first migrate to Drupal 9 and subsequently move to Drupal 10.

Conclusion

Drupal is a framework used by several big brands to form the basis of their audience outreach capabilities. While it is open-source, it can help create unique digital experiences through feature-rich modules. In addition, the Drupal 10 Readiness Initiative ensures continuous updates to the CMS that add newer features at regular intervals. 

Drupal will see a new upgrade by the middle of next year. The upgrade to Drupal 10 will include various features that can be helpful to enhance the visitor experience when they are on the site. It requires businesses to be ready for the upgrade whenever the new release happens. They must be in touch with the migration experts to ensure a seamless transition. You can also be in touch with our experts, who have many years of experience in Drupal.