Drupal 7’s End-Of-Life was extended to November 1, 2023
Citing the original article, Drupal 7’s End-of-Life extended to November 1, 2023, more than a decade after its first release, Drupal 7 is still widely used across the web. It can be found powering civic engagement in government installations; managing vast amounts of content for faculty, students, and staff in educational institutions; and providing the digital backbone for many businesses and non-profit organizations. Drupal 9, and shortly Drupal 10, is well-maintained, secure, stable, and feature-rich, but many organizations still rely on version 7.
The teams that currently maintain the core of version 7, a few other teams and developers worldwide who still maintain legacy implementations, and the end users they serve, are an essential part of the Drupal community. While these developers and users should still plan multiple upgrades to a newer version of Drupal, if they cannot upgrade before the advertised end of life, they will be exposed to bugs and vulnerabilities that they will need to address without any support from the community.
What does this all mean?
This means that any website with Drupal 7 in November 2023:
- Drupal 7 will no longer have community support. The community will no longer create new projects, fix bugs in existing projects, post documentation, etc., on Drupal 7;
- There will be no more core commits for Drupal 7;
- The Drupal Security Team will no longer provide Security Consulting or support for Drupal 7 or contribute to modules, themes, or other projects. Reports about Drupal 7 vulnerabilities could become public by creating 0 days exploits;
- All versions of Drupal 7 on all project pages will be marked as “not supported”. Maintainers can change this flag if they wish;
- On Drupal 7 websites with the Update Status module, Drupal Core will show as “not supported”;
- After November 2023, using Drupal 7 will be marked as insecure in third-party scans, as it will no longer be supported;
- The best practice is not to use unsupported software), it would not be advisable to continue building new sites with Drupal 7;
- Now is the time to start planning your migration to version 9 or 10.
Don’t panic; there are options
If running a Drupal 7 site, you have four potential options to ensure security and community support. These options are:
- Upgrading your Drupal 7 website to Drupal 9, given that Drupal 8 is decommissioned; later, upgrading to Drupal 9 to Drupal 10;
- Taking a different way: create a Drupal 7 branch and hire specialists for ongoing website support;
- Doing nothing, hiring a Drupal developer, and planning a new website for November 2023.
I insist, do not panic… Thinking about it differently, there are some advantages to this announcement of the Drupal 7 end-of-life extension:
- You will have more time to complete your next project properly thanks to the extension;
- think of it as having the opportunity to include extra planning and explore a redesign and dedicate real-time to accessibility considerations;
- starting now may save money in the long run by securing an agency before costs rise by 2023.
This is the biggest gift the Drupal project lead, Dries Buytaert, the Drupal Association, and the Drupal Security Working Group can give you. Still, you should start immediately or continue (if that is the case)with your migration journey as planned. Having the Drupal 7 end-of-life extended means you reduce the time you are under pressure. Plus, sites will continue to be safe during this time.
Summary
After many extensions and through the PSA-2022–02–23 announcement, the Drupal project lead, Dries Buytaert, the Drupal Association, and the Drupal Security Working Group are announcing that Drupal 7’s scheduled end-of-life date will be reassessed annually. As of the announcement, Drupal has extended the EOL of this version by one year to November 1, 2023.
