7 Tips on Upgrading from Drupal 8 to Drupal 9
While Drupal is a content management system with great flexibility, upgrading your website’s Drupal version can be a complex process — and if you go in without a plan, you risk having a rocky journey.
While upgrading a website from Drupal 8 to 9 does not usually entail a massive rebuild as a D7-D9 migration does, it is nonetheless a significant change that requires planning and forethought. It is also the most urgently needed version change now, as while Drupal 7 does not lose support until November 2022, Drupal 8 will by November this year.
This particular upgrade has been billed as a significantly large security update, and to an extent that is true. But because there are significant changes between these two versions, it has taken significantly more effort than your typical update.
This week I have embarked on a D8-D9 migration of a Drupal multisite system — one Drupal codebase supporting 24 websites, each with its own database. Having finished the critical upgrade steps, we are now in our quality assurance phase, and already there are quite a few lessons learned. Over the course of the week, I have gleaned some insight that I think could be useful to others. With that, below are some tips on how to make the D8-to-D9 transition. Let’s get started!
