Drupal 8
You want to live the future without dragging the past behind you, Drupal 8 does that very well. It's completely rebuild from the ground up and has a lot of cool features:
Drupal 8 is not backward compatible, I think that's a good thing: you don't want to drag legacy stuff behind you. That's a big bucket on your boat.
>> Giới thiệu Embarking on a Drupal 8 adventure
>> Làm thế nào để custom commands trong Drupal 8 Console
>> Giới thiệu Handling Uncertainty khi Estimating Software Projects
So is it necessary to upgrade your current Drupal 6 or Drupal 7 to Drupal 8? Considerations for:
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Drupal 6 to Drupal 8
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Drupal 6 to Drupal 7
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Drupal 7 to Drupal 8
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Tools for upgrading to Drupal 8
Difficult process?
Generically spoken, to what degree a Drupal upgrade process is difficult depends on the initial Drupal website builder. If that party knew what they were doing and took a future upgrade into account, than I guess you'll be quite safe. But if that party duct-taped(link is external) andCable tied(link is external) your Drupal site... then you might have a bigger challenge.
1. Drupal 6 to Drupal 8
Drupal 6 - RIP (almost)
Community support for Drupal 6 ends when Drupal 8 gets released, just like with Drupal 5. If you are running on Drupal 6 it won't say 'kaboom!' immediately, but you should have a plan to upgrade to 7 or 8.
Drupal 6 site data (source(link is external)):
About 20% of total Drupal sites is Drupal 6. Good to know: Drupal 6 will have 3 additional months of security support when Drupal 8 is released(link is external). So Drupal 8 modules can mature some more and an upgrade will be smoother. See also(link is external).
Simple Drupal 6 websites
With a simple Drupal 6 website I mean a 'brochure' website. In this website you have a couple dozens of pages with some static information and maybe a blog about your organization, company or personal activities. So there are no complex functions like an online community, webshop or social intranet/extranet. The project costs initially were 40~200 hours.
If you have such a Drupal 6 'brochure' site, then Drupal 8 will probably be a good candidate, as it has a lot of features out of the box and chances are you can don't need extra modules. So upgrade to Drupal 8 asap will probably the best step.
More complex Drupal 6 websites
A more complex Drupal 6 website would be an online community, a webshop or a Drupal social intranet. There are contrib modules installed and additional custom modules. The project costs initially were more than ~ 300 hours.
In this case you probably need extra modules in Drupal 8 to migrate your system. When those modules are not yet migrated then you can wait for them. But it's kind of uncertain when they will be migrated and stable. A status overview(link is external) of Drupal 8 modules.
When it's clear that the needed modules will be ported to Drupal 8 in the foreseeable future then maybe it's best to wait for that and migrate asap after those modules became stable. If they are not migrated in the near future, then take a look at what Drupal 7 has to offer (see below).
If your needed functions are also not available in Drupal 7 modules, then you have to build it custom. It's seems wise to do that in Drupal 8.
2. Drupal 6 to Drupal 7
When Drupal 7 was released, we waited a few months with migrating Drupal 5 and 6 sites. As soon as the necessary modules were ported we upgraded the sites.
Drupal 5 data (source(link is external)):
If you can't wait until the necessary modules are ported to Drupal 8, then upgrading your Drupal 6 system to Drupal 7 is an option. Of course the modules must be available in Drupal 7, stable.
Drupal 8 is almost 5 years in development, if this continues then Drupal 7 will be supported for a long while. Including the extra 3 months security support Drupal 7 will be supported until ~ 2019. This is a rough estimate; Drupal 9 will probably not be in development for 5 years, since it will not be build from the ground up.
3. Drupal 7
Al lot of arguments described above also apply to a Drupal 7 website. It really depends on the complexity of your system: how much custom and contrib modules you implemented. The more complex the site, the less smooth an upgrade to Drupal 8 will be.
Since Drupal 7 probably will be supported for the next 3~4 years, I see no maintenance reason to switch to Drupal 8. But if you want to use all cool new features of Drupal 8 then upgrading if worth the consideration.
4. Tools to upgrade to Drupal 8
Drupal 8 core ships with a migrate module with an import API. This takes care of a lot of upgrading stuff, see Drupal IMP group(link is external)
If you have a Drupal 6 or 7 install with little active modules then chances are those modules won't be available in Drupal 8 in near future. So maybe then you'll have to do the upgrades on your own.
Here are some resources that can help you with upgrading your modules and content to Drupal 8: