What You Need to Know About Drupal 11
The Drupal content management system (CMS) is one of the world’s most prevalent website development platforms. Favored by business leaders and open source practitioners worldwide, Drupal delivers a wide range of capabilities, features, and benefits that make it easy to build and maintain almost any website.
With its renowned flexibility, scalability, and security, it’s not surprising that about one in eight enterprise websites run on the Drupal platform. That includes an impressive list of organizations, including Citibank, IBM, Fuji Film, Nasdaq, Pfizer, Princeton University, Tesla, and the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.
Drupal’s latest update, Drupal 11, expands on the platform’s well-loved capabilities and continues to make it the CMS of choice for ambitious site builders.
Before we walk you through how to implement or upgrade it, let’s reinforce why so many people view Drupal as an essential part of their business strategy.
Why Site Builders Choose Drupal
As an open source project, Drupal delivers benefits that other CMSs struggle to replicate. Let’s cover a few to get you started.
As one of the most composable CMSs in the world, Drupal gives developers a ton of flexibility. Also, with Drupal, marketers can deliver optimized digital experiences without having to wait for developers to assist them. And with 50,000+ integrations, Drupal gives site builders complete freedom to customize their sites and content precisely how they want it. On top of that, Drupal delivers world-class performance, scalability, security, and accessibility.
So whether you're a developer, marketer, or business leader, there is a long list of reasons why you would consider the Drupal CMS platform above all others.
How to Get Started with Drupal 11
If you’re new to Drupal and looking to get started with Drupal 11, the process is fairly easy to follow. Remember that installing and running Drupal is completely free. This includes the 50,000+ modules available to extend site functionality and the 2,500+ themes used to modify site appearance.
Upgrading to Drupal 11
For many of you who already use a previous version of Drupal, the new release may require a site migration or an upgrade. There are also new technical requirements that help support long-term stability and pave the way for further innovation, including:
- MySQL/Percona 8.0
- MariaDB 10.6
- SQLite 3.45
- PostgreSQL 16
- PHP 8.3
- Composer 2.7.0
Drupal 11 requires PHP 8.3, an upgrade that helps improve security, performance, and supportability for your sites regardless of Drupal version. Since older versions of PHP are not supported by Drupal 11, you’ll need to ensure your code is PHP 8.3 compatible now. But, a big upside here is that PHP 8.3 is much faster than PHP 8.1 and 8.2.
How to Upgrade From Drupal 10
If you’re considering an upgrade to Drupal 11, the good news is that it’s a fairly smooth and straightforward process, especially if you’re already on Drupal 10. That said, Drupal sites running 10.2.x or earlier versions must first update to 10.3.0 or later. (In general, sites should update to the most recent release of their current major branch before updating to the next major release.)
Once you’re on 10.3.0 or later, follow these steps:
1. Install Upgrade Status on your development site to gamify the move to Drupal 11 with a checklist of the next steps you might need to perform.
2. As pointed out by Upgrade Status, leverage Drupal Rector to automatically generate fixes that help address compatibility issues in your custom code instead of starting the fixes updates manually. The most common deprecated APIs are covered by Drupal Rector, so this gives you a good head start. Any remaining issues identified by Upgrade Status will need to be fixed manually, but the module will direct you to documentation for the required changes.
3. Ensure contributed projects used are compatible with Drupal 11. If a project you’re using is not yet compatible, Upgrade Status will guide you to contribute to fixing it. In the meantime, use the Lenient Composer plug-in to update the project on your site. If uncommitted patches are available for that project, you can use cweagans/composer-patches to apply them where necessary. Work with the new Project Update Working Group to get contributed projects updated where maintainers are not active anymore.
How to Upgrade From Drupal 9
Since Drupal 9 reached its end of life on November 1, 2023, users should upgrade to Drupal 10 at a minimum. To upgrade to Drupal 11, you must upgrade to Drupal 10.3 first; that step can't be skipped. Make sure your Drupal 9 site is up to date on Drupal 9.5.x before starting the Drupal 10 upgrade.
You can leverage the same tools and steps in the above "How to Upgrade From Drupal 10" section to update your site from Drupal 9 to Drupal 10, and then from Drupal 10 to 11, at a time that best suits your organization.
How to Upgrade From Drupal 8
Drupal 8 reached its end of life in November 2021. To upgrade to Drupal 11, you must first update your site to Drupal 9, then to Drupal 10. To analyze your site, use the Upgrade Status module. Most necessary custom code updates can be completed automatically using Drupal Rector for this upgrade too.
How to Upgrade From Drupal 7
Drupal 7 will reach end of life on January 5, 2025. Drupal 11 includes migration tools that make it possible to migrate directly from Drupal 7. A significant number of contributed projects are expected to become compatible with Drupal 11 by Drupal 7's end of life.
The Acquia Migrate Accelerate product has now been open sourced, so anyone can use it to dramatically speed up the migration process using an easy-to-follow user interface.
If you use any custom modules, Drupal Module Upgrader helps identify where code needs to be changed to be compatible with Drupal 8, 9, 10 or 11. At the moment, it can’t convert code to work with Drupal 11 automatically, but the analyzer function is still useful. There are other community add-ons in the Migrate Tools and Migrate Plus projects to help streamline the upgrade.
The Future of Drupal
Drupal 11 was released August 2, 2024 and while Drupal 10 will not have new features added, it will be supported until Drupal 12's release in mid- to late 2026.
Since the two major versions (Drupal 10 and Drupal 11) will have two years of overlapping support, it will be possible to move from the long-term support version of Drupal 10 to a long-term support version of Drupal 11. Both developers and business leaders appreciate a schedule like this because they can move from one super-stable version of Drupal to another, gaining many benefits each time while minimizing impacts on their organizations. So, even late adopters with a more conservative upgrade approach get value from the LTS versions built into the upgrade schedule.
The Drupal Starshot Initiative
Drupal 11 sets the foundation for innovations that will make Drupal even more powerful and capable. The Drupal Starshot Initiative aims to build a new default download of Drupal that enables site builders with limited technical experience to easily create new sites through their browsers. This will help users overcome a common hurdle of getting started with Drupal and will help them get from install to launch quickly.
Learn How to Leverage the Latest Drupal Enhancements for Your Digital Experiences
As the world's foremost Drupal contributor, the Acquia team is here to help you make your digital vision a reality. Whether you're a newbie or a seasoned site builder, Acquia's got you covered. To learn more about the latest updates to Drupal, including more info on Starshot, download the Ultimate Guide to Drupal.
Drupal Initiative Coordinator Acquia
