The first official Drupal 8 release is coming. Ok, so it might seem like it's approaching at a snails pace rather than a speeding juggernaut... but it is on its way. So what does this mean if you're still supporting Drupal 6 sites? This post should help you identify the issues.What Drupal 6 support will be provided?

There's quite a lot of discussion in the Drupal community at the moment about what will happen to support for Drupal 6 sites once Drupal 8 is officially released.

Currently Drupal core only supports one version behind the current stable release. That means that when Drupal 8 has its first stable release (8.0.0) all Drupal 6 sites will no longer have any core support - more specifically security updates.

There was an issue on the D6 queue around this as well as discussions at DrupalCon Austin, which suggested that this support period should be extended to 12 months.  

Although there was quite mixed feelings about this, ultimately the security team (along with key module maintainers, and representatives of the Drupal security team’s) responded by suggesting that Drupal 6 will be supported for three months after the first release of Drupal 8. 

What does this mean for all our current Drupal 6 sites?

Currently there are only three options available for any current Drupal 6 sites:

1. Migrate any existing Drupal 6 sites to Drupal 7 (this will still be supported until Drupal 9 is released)
2. Wait until Drupal 8 is released and migrate your Drupal 6 site using ‘Migrate in Core: Drupal 6 to Drupal 8'
3. Cross your fingers and hope for the best once Drupal 8 is released!

Option 1 is the obvious choice out of these, as Drupal 7 is stable and has been around for several years now and will be supported until Drupal 9 is released.

Option 2 will come with its own problems due to the infancy of Drupal 8 as well as contrib modules that you are currently using that haven’t got a Drupal 8 version yet. 

Due to the contrib modules not currently supporting a Drupal 8 version, this could delay you migrating and having to wait beyond the three months for a module to have a Drupal 8 version.

Option 3 is at your own risk, and there are still Drupal 5 sites out there but ultimately this will depend upon what your customers are happy to spend their money on.

According to the usage stats, there are still around 3,800 Drupal 5 sites and just under 198,000 Drupal 6 sites, so there are still many sites which will need to be migrated.

Why are customers resistant to migrating?

Our customers are guided (by agencies like us) to keep their sites up-to-date with security releases for core as well as contrib modules etc.  

In situations where a core version is due to have support dropped we would normally recommend our clients to start considering planning a rebuild of their site. This rebuild would be on the latest stable release (currently Drupal 7) so that they can continue to maintain the security support. 

This also makes it easier (and ultimately cheaper) for them as the community will continue supporting and maintaining contrib modules for the currently supported versions.

Often customers can be resistant to this due to the cost of needing to rebuild their site and migrate their data. This can be understandable, as “if it aint broke, don’t fix it”, or they simply just don’t have the available money to spend on building a new site.

At Deeson Group we currently have several sites that are still on Drupal 6, and even one on Drupal 5.

As an agency we will continue to support Drupal 6 once the official release of Drupal 8 comes out, but this will probably become more painful as time goes on: less people have experience with this version and problems arise with contrib modules which are no longer supported.

Our advice?

Get prepared: Make sure that your site is running on Drupal 7 and if not, start thinking about it and planning the migration to Drupal 7 now.

Read moreDrupal 6 Support after Drupal 8 Official Release - what affect will it have on you?By Mike Davis | 31st July 2014