Ditch Drupal 6 for the all new Drupal 8

Drupal 6 kicked off way back in 2008. For the time it was a major breakthrough in technology, and the platform supported many major websites including whitehouse.gov. Over its lifespan, Drupal 6 had more than 700 contributed modules and 600 custom themes. It boasted a nicer menu structure and an easier installation process than its predecessors, as well as improved security and a handy drag and drop menu. Drupal 6 was well ahead of its time. Now it is unsupported, outdated and frankly, old. It’s time for you and your website to move on.

The complete history of Drupal

What’s new in Drupal?

Drupal 8 (released November 2015) comes with a whole set of new built-in gadgets, including mobile responsive themes, built in web services to make it an API-first CMS, improved editorial experience, accessibility, powerful multilingual tools (at last), improved performance, HTML5, and better SEO and analytics tools. With over 18 months since releasing, it has become reliably stable, secure, and ready for you to make the switch.

Check out our 7 Reasons why Now is the Right Time to Move to Drupal 8

Why Drupal 6 isn’t a safe bet anymore

Without support from the community, Drupal 6 is going to be opened to more and more security risks. It’s modules will become outdated and unwieldy, and users will struggle to be able to get the performance they’ve come to expect with modern websites. While upgrading may seem like a daunting task, the business risks of remaining with Drupal 6 are far higher.

Migrations - easier than you think?

Believe it or not, Drupal 8 is stacked full of migration modules and toolsets to help you move your content from one platform to another. While many of these focus simply on moving a site between completely different platform, there are some that are designed to assist with moving between versions of Drupal. Depending on how your website was developed these can be tricky to use, and can lead to many hours of rework ‘rebuilding’ your website at the other end. If your website is stacked full of custom features, you may find that stock migration modules don’t quite provide the service you need.

Partners in Migration

If you’re a tech-wiz with a small website and plenty of time, you might find migrating your site on your own an exciting and economically sound venture. However, Drupal has become such a user friendly platform that many of its users skillsets are in marketing, communications and social relations. If that’s you, perhaps the thought of trying to move all your web content to another platform is so daunting you’ve been carefully looking the other way while Drupal 8 was released and took the world by storm.

With our assistance, your migration can not only be smooth and painless, but an opportunity to resolve some of those niggling website issues, and take a step forward into greater customer engagement. A shift to Drupal 8 can help you improve your conversions whilst making site maintenance easier.

Vardot - Drupal experts since 2011

Here at Vardot we’ve been supporting people since 2011. With our specialist team of Drupal experts we’re prepared to help migrate anything from a small two-page website, to a large scale page with multiple custom modules and integrations. Working with our team you’ll be on first name basis with our staff, and there is no shuffling between departments.

We believe in empowering our customers and our community - by giving back to the open source community. We promote a vibrant culture that benefits everyone involved. Working with us goes hand in hand with giving back, and you can be sure we’ll equip you with the skills and knowledge you need for the day-to-day management of your website moving forward.

If you have a site that needs migrating, or just a refresh, get in touch with us, we can’t wait to hear from you.