Drupal 11

I think it’s fair to say that the initial upgrade to Drupal 11 isn’t all that exciting (yet).

The biggest changes happening with Drupal are yet to come, and tied to the new “Drupal Starshot” initiative, which we wrote about earlier this year. Exciting new features such as Automatic Updates and Project Browser will make their debut in future minor releases (e.g. 11.1, 11.2, etc.). 

The current upgrade to Drupal 11 is more about setting the stage so your website is ready for the next round of features to come. There are a few new features to highlight today, however.

• “Recipes” is an exciting new module in core Drupal (the default install). It allows you to install pre-configured features to your existing Drupal website, such as adding an events calendar. These use your existing modules, but do the work of setting up and configuring the end result.
  • Each recipe is a one-time installation to your site, helping get a quick start or pre configured feature.
  • It’s still in an “experimental state”, meaning there may be bugs, but definitely more improvements still to come
  • The library of available recipes online is relatively small so far, but sure to grow over time.
• The Workspaces module is now included in core. This powerful module allows you to create different versions of your Drupal site (e.g “stage” or “live”) within Drupal itself. This is not to be confused with different staging platforms on a hosting server. Workspaces allows you to make sitewide content updates on a staging (for example) and push those changes at a later date. You can even move specific individual changes between stages.
• The Navigation module is now in core. This allows site editors/admins to change the admin toolbar to a left-aligned, collapsible sidebar navigation, instead of its current place across the top of the page
• The Taxonomy module has always been in core, but it now has support for revisions and content moderation, just like content types, so editors manage or roll back taxonomy edits if needed.

Other changes relate to improving Drupal “Core” itself, and making it faster to install and easier to maintain. 

To that end, certain older modules have been removed from the default installation, based on usage. This helps make the size of the default installation smaller.

The list includes:

• Forum
• Book
• Tour
• Statistics
• Tracker
• Actions UI

Some of these have been around for a long time, however, like the Book module. You may be familiar with that one in particular, and have it running on your own site.

We use that one frequently to power our client support documents. Fortunately that module will continue as a “contrib” module, meaning its features are still available for those who need it.

Officially you can make the upgrade today. But Drupal 10 will be supported for a longer period of time, meaning you don’t have to upgrade anytime soon. It’s officially going to be supported until mid-to-late 2026. So you have plenty of time to schedule your upgrade over a longer period of time, and determine if any upcoming features to Drupal 11 are worth the upgrade.

It’s generally beneficial to wait on major version upgrades (e.g. 10 to 11) until it’s been more widely tested by the community and any remaining bugs or compatibility issues are worked out.

For our part, we’ll be recommending clients plan for an upgrade in spring or summer of 2025. Of course if you have a website running on a version of Drupal older than 10, you shouldn’t wait. Drupal 8 and 9 are already “end of life” and Drupal 7 is finally coming to end (of official support) in January 2025.

Starting with Drupal 8, Drupal as a project committed to a more predictable and regular schedule of updates. New “major” versions (e.g. 10 to 11) are released every 2 years, and minor versions (e.g. 10.2 to 10.3) are released every 6 months.

The great news is that the pain of difficult upgrades is long a thing of the past. Upgrading from 9 to 10 to 11 (and onwards) is a relatively simple process, while the speed and predictability of version upgrades means Drupal as a project is always improving, and keeps getting better!

Regularly keeping your Drupal site up-to-date is a best practice – both for avoiding the bad (bugs, security concerns) and embracing the good (new features, improvements).

Knowing the right time to upgrade is a more nuanced decision. If you are looking for a team of Drupal professionals to support your website, or advise on your next upgrade, contact Electric Citizen!