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In a much-analyzed 2013 interview with Computerworld, Drupal founder and “benevolent dictator” Dries Buytaert laid out a future path for the software focused squarely on enterprise clients (see also “Will the Revolution be Drupalized?”). While small sites had their place, Buytaert asserted, “I think we just need to say we’re more about big sites.” With Drupal 8, he concluded, “I really think we can say we’ve built the best CMS for enterprise systems.”[1]

Where does this bright future leave the smaller sites that up till now have formed the mainstay of Drupal adopters?

What’s in the Pipe

Drupal 8 is not all bad news for smaller sites; there are many new features and enhancements that should lower or eliminate some previous barriers.

• More in core Many areas of key functionality that previously required downloading, installing, and configuring modules and other dependencies now will work out of the box. Case in point: WYSIWYG editing.
• UI improvements A lot of customization that previously required specialized modules or custom code is now exposed via the core admin interface.

That said, there are signs of trouble ahead:

Hosting Barriers

Drupal 7 performance already pushed the limits of the typical, inexpensive, shared hosting that most small sites rely on. And Drupal 8? Watch out. It has what Drupal 8 maintainer Nathaniel Catchpole frankly called “an embarrassingly high memory requirement.”[2] Yes, memory issues can be addressed through solutions like reverse proxy caching or pushing search indexing to Solr. But those options are precisely the ones that are missing from the vast majority of shared hosts.

DIYers Beware

Small Drupal sites have benefited from the ease of dabbling in Drupal development. Drupal 8, in contrast, has been rewritten from the ground up with professional programmers in mind. Dependency injection, anyone?