As of the 5th of January, Drupal 7 is no longer supported and will receive no new security or compatibility updates.
But what if you already have a working Drupal 7 installation?
Why should you upgrade?
The major reason is security.
There will be no new security updates for Drupal 7, so to stay secure and protect your data - especially if you have users or customer data - you should upgrade and continue receiving security updates.
Aside from Drupal 7 core, a lot of Drupal 7 modules and themes have been unsupported for some time, so you may have other insecure or unsupported modules that you need to upgrade.
## Dependencies
To keep up to date with the latest versions of PHP and MySQL - the software needed to run Drupal, and other dependencies - you should upgrade to Drupal 10 or 11.
Drupal 11 requires PHP 8.3 and MySQL 8.0, so by upgrading, you'll also keep your dependencies up to date, benefit from their security updates, bug fixes and performance improvements.
## Developer Experience
Newer versions of software are nicer to work with, making it easier to find Developers.
PHP 8 can look very different to earlier versions used by Drupal 7, making it nicer and quicker to write - and easier to deliver features.
Drupal 7 was probably one of the only projects using SimpleTest for automated tests, whereas the newer versions have used PHPUnit - the defacto PHP testing tool - making automated testing and test-driven development easier and more accessible.
Drupal 8 also uses Twig as its templating engine, making theming more powerful and more familiar to front-end developers.
## More Choice
Whilst a lot of the same Drupal modules and themes exist for Drupal 7 and 10, there are a lot of new options available and a lot more in Drupal core, such as Layout Builder, media management and built-in APIs, and a lot more in the new Drupal CMS version.
The new versions of Drupal are constantly evolving, adding new features and functionality without you needing to rebuild your application and rewrite your code as you'd have needed to do for previous major version upgrades.
Maybe you can replace some of your existing code with some of these new or updated modules.
## Anything Else?
These are some of the reasons I think you should upgrade from Drupal 7, but there are others.
If you want to hear more, email me and we can discuss more and, if you're stuck on Drupal 7, I can create a custom roadmap for you to get you moving towards Drupal 11.
