Should you upgrade your Drupal 7 website or

migrate to Drupal 8?

DrupalCamp Montreal 2017 – Symetris.ca

Today’s agenda

1. About Symetris2. Why this question is important3. Differences (and similarities) between D7 & D84. What factors can influence your decision?

Risks and benefits of each scenario5. Conclusion

Prologue

About Symetris

Unlock your web potentialwith Symetris

***

• Founded in 2004 – 13 years ago!• 17 experts (most certified devs in Qc)• Masters of Drupal since “Drupal 5”• Regular Drupalcamp presenters and

sponsors

Our team

Brad MuncsPresident @ Symetris

About me

Chapter 1

Staying with D7 or moving to D8:Why the question is important

I’m starting with a few assumptions

○ You have already invested in Drupal 7■ So I don’t need to convince you that Drupal is cool

○ You want to maintain or evolve your existing platform or website

○ You’re looking for an answer in “business speak”, not in technobabble

Elements that impact your decision

○ What is the best ROI?■ Cost/time of effort vs return

○ How much time will this take to implement?

○ Will there be any changes to flexibility, stability or durability?

○ Will it be easier to maintain content for site administrators

○ Will it be easier to maintain code for developers?

The answer, of course is:

IT DEPENDS

The goal of this presentation is to help you make the right decision for your organization based on your specific context.

I want to help you identify the elements that will influence your decision.

Chapter 2

Differences (and similarities)between D7 and D8

Maturity

○ Drupal 7 was launched in January 2011

○ Drupal 8 was launched in November 2015

○ (That’s 5 years apart.)

Technical enhancements in D8

○ Easier configuration management■ Better deployments and more sophisticated maintenance

○ Cleaner code ■ Uses Symfony and more object-oriented code

○ More modules are “core” in D8■ Including “view” and “multilingualism”

Business enhancements in D8

○ Easier to edit content

○ Mobile backend (for editing on the fly)

○ Better language/multilingual support

○ More digiral ecosystem integrations

○ Faster deployments

○ Better performance and scalability

○ “Content as a service” easy to implement

Chapter 3

Factors that can influence your decision:

risks and benefits for both scenarios

Factors that influence risk & benefits

○ Current D7 Setup

○ Quantity and complexity of data

○ Budget (time & money)

○ Scope of upcoming enhancements

○ Projected lifetime of existing website

○ Completely new/standalone project?

Chapter 4

Conclusion: best cases for

both scenarios (stay D7 vs go D8)

Stay with D7 if you:

○ Aren’t planning any major enhancements

○ Are planning a complete redesign within the next 2 years (wait to move to D8 then)

○ Have lots of custom-developed modules, custom workflows or interactions with external systems/data

○ Need to deploy very quickly (weeks)

○ Need to keep the budget as light as possible in the short term (might be higher in long run)

Upgrade to D8 if you:

○ Have important new features to add

○ Need to guarantee ongoing support for 5+ yrs

○ Regularly update content or use multiple languages (easier in D8)

○ Have a “low complexity” website

○ Can invest more time and money upfront (to reduce the cost down the line)

○ Have frequent deployments (easier in D8)

○ Have high requirements for performance and scalability

○ Are starting a new project

Merci !

Any questions?

Contact us atinfo@symetris.ca

Presentation soon available on Slideshare

PS: We’re looking for Drupal developers! Send your CV!