Drupal is currently in the process of phasing out older versions of the platform. Drupal 6 has reached its ‘end of life stage,’ meaning that it is no longer supported by the Drupal community. This means that for outdated versions they will no longer be making updates, fixing security bugs, supporting or providing online support, or producing new themes or templates.
However, Drupal 8 comes with some amazing features that you can utilize to further enhance your web presence. Content management is even easier on Drupal 8, and administrators can take advantage of new built-in themes with a responsive design, which makes it easy to adapt the site to mobile and tablet devices. For editors, it also offers the ability to make changes on the client side of the site and offers drag and drop upload features.
Why Upgrade to Drupal 8? Its the Features
1. Mobile Friendly
In 2018, over 60% of site traffic came from mobile devices, so it is crucial to have your site be mobile responsive. Unlike Drupal 6 and 7, the Drupal 8 has templates that can easily adapt to different devices.
2. Fast Performing
Drupal 8 comes with excellence performance speed, another crucial component for a great website experience since slow load times often lead to decreased site traffic and a higher bounce rate. Due to its inclusion of BigPipe in core, the Drupal 8 platform has the ability to identify which pages are loading more slowly and help bring them up to speed.
3. Live Editing Features
One of the awesome features on Drupal 8 is its new client-side editing feature, which allows you to make changes directly to the content on the front end of the page. This allows you to make changes easily and quickly within just a few seconds.
4. Inclusion of Twig Template Engine
The Twig engine template makes the jobs of on staff coders and developers less time consuming. It is easy to learn and makes developing templates for the site much quicker and easier. It is also highly secure, and has the ability to evaluate any untrusted code. Drupal 8 also incorporates themed-based templates for writing HTML5, which helps increase productivity.
5. Built In Fields
Drupal 8 gives the ability to integrate frequently used or trending fields right on to your site, for example, contact information such as email and phone number entry, without having to code it into the site.
6. Multilingual Features
Drupal 8 offers lots of cool features for translation, which is great if you have a multicultural audience with whom you want to connect. Some of the features include the ability to translate a specific web page or to insert an option for a user to change the language featured on the page.
Need help with migrating your website to Drupal 8?
Our development team at Alliance are experts when it comes to working on the Drupal platform. For over 16 years, we have experience designing custom Drupal websites and content management systems, as well as providing assistance with Drupal site migrations and upgrades. You’ll keep everything you’ve spent years working on and be able to take advantage of all the updates and features of the newest version of Drupal.