10 Reasons why you need to migrate from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8

Migrating to Drupal 8 is a crucial step for any upcoming large scale website or application. But because the Drupal CMS spent about 5 years in upgrading a better, bigger and brighter “Drupal 8” – It would prove to be the best logical choice for the entire web solutions.

Here are the 10 major reasons to accelerate all the protruding concerns for accepting the new technology D8:

1. New theme engine:
   If you were looking for a change from PHP or any other templates, Drupal 8 brings you a new theme engine named –‘Twig’. Twig’s templates can redesign an existing site or create a new unique website based on your numerous business needs. They are easily adaptable, more secured and written in syntax.

2. Content management simplified:
   Drupal 8 brings core initiative by implementing HTML5 support. It provides updated platform with modern trends and provides mobile first approach.  It gives ultimate access to new input fields like, date, email, address, telephone, link and reference.  This makes easier for web developers to add new fields without specifying type of field separately. Thus the content management is more simplified, attractive and powerful for end users.

3. Built –in Multilingual:
   Drupal 8 initiates out of the box ability to build multilingual sites. This insane feature allows configurations for site and content translations.  It facilitates you to block visibility and develop pages that include filtering based on language views.Below are the four key modules introduced by Drupal 8 in its core.
   • Language
   • Content translation
   • Interface translation
   • Configuration translation

4. Minor release cycle
   Drupal’s success of more than 18 years now is mainly because this platform has always applied big forward-looking moves. The major version upgrades were very painful in past. But the big news is, a new minor release is launched every six months. The release cycle makes sizable functionality improvements every six months instead of every few years.

5. Easy Editing
   CK editor is introduced by Drupal 8. It enables developers to utilize tools for easily managing content. This will allow editor to use the rich text editor to avail common word processor features when developing or editing web pages.In-place edit feature of Drupal 8 allows users to edit text on any page, without having to switch to the full edit form. This results in creating much easier drafts and implementing better web security.

6. Web Service Development
   Drupal 8 is a game leader for creating data source and output content as in JSON or XML. In this version of Drupal development is simplified based on the four new models built in it.
   • HAL( Hypertext Application Language)
   • HTTP Basic Authentication
   • RESTful web services
   • Serialization

   These new web modules will enable any project to decrease its development cost. Also it is more time effective and will help with faster development of a project.

7. User experience
   Drupal 8 initiates cache entities that significantly bring better performance for any website. Developers have successfully improved the loading speed of a website with the help of this feature.Also the built-in configuration management helps developers to move views, content type, fields and such other configuration elements. These are moved to the web server from the local development environment.This gives great satisfaction to users and efficient development to the website owners.

8. Views integrated with core
   In Drupal 8 views is integral part of core, whereas in Drupal 7 views was only a module. Views sits first in the Drupal module hierarchy, that means many administration screens are built using views. As in the hitherto-contributed module is implemented by developers to output lists, graphs, menus, tables, maps, galleries, reports, blocks etc. Also developers can customize views without adding extra time and effort.Users can now quickly create pages, admin sections, blocks, etc. and easily modify the existing ones.

9. Faster PHP7 support
   Drupal 8 is a faster version with PHP7 support that improves caching and loading speed. This was designed by keeping authenticated users in mind and when it noticed difficulties with increased traffic of users. Drupal initiated with things like Bigpipe and authenticated users cache, which made every possible effort of delivering the content to auth and anon users. This brings improvements in performance for an average site.

10. Perfect platform for future
    Today we have hundreds of connected devices and everything has turned more complicated. As Preston and Dries have put in, the web has changed. Companies now have major demanding and changing needs. As mobile revolution has been implemented, the desktop trend seems to have been vanished years back. Drupal 8 took API-first initiative with the hype in technical devices.

Now is the time to think about “content first” and Drupal 8 CMS should be able to adapt the new changing scenarios. It is not enough for companies today to simply have a website. The website of any company today needs to be spread among different devices. Like mobiles, tablets, watches, desktop to screens in the street and the most memorable IoT revolution. Drupal 8 possess the flexible architecture that could adapt this changing environment. Check out Top Key Factors to consider before Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 Migration and Security Updates!

Hence, what is stopping you from taking crucial decision? This upgrade will be a huge investment and bring long term benefits to your business. After coming across these profitable and most effective features of Drupal 8, you might wonder if, you are late to upgrade the latest version of Drupal. As Drupal 8 was launched in 2015, but let me relieve you as Drupal 8 is designed to enable smother transfer to the future Drupal 9 which will launch by 2021.

So you still have time and this the time to migrate to Drupal 8 – a perfect platform to jeopardize your business and bring more benefits for the future.

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