Get Ready for Drupal 10

Businesses, organizations, and individuals alike are increasingly leveraging Drupal’s powerful content management system to create scalable and content-focused websites. Now with the release of Drupal 10 – a major upgrade from its predecessor versions – digital marketing teams can access an even better suite of features to further bolster their online presence. In this blog post we will dive into why making the switch is worthwhile for your site and what you should consider beforehand when upgrading to Drupal 10.

Benefits of Making the Move to Drupal 10

Improved security
Including significant updates to the security of the platform, this latest version of Drupal addresses several known vulnerabilities and includes new security features to protect against potential threats. Upgrading to Drupal 10 will give you peace of mind knowing that your website is more secure.

New features and improvements
Drupal 10 includes a host of new features and improvements, such as improved support for multilingual websites, improved accessibility, and a revamped media library. These new features and improvements can help improve the functionality and usability of your website.

Better performance
Optimized for performance, Drupal 10 powered websites will run faster and more efficiently. This can lead to improved user experience, better search engine rankings, and increased conversions.

Improved accessibility
Drupal 10, designed to prioritize the latest standards in web accessibility, is now more innately usable and navigable by users with disabilities, allowing them to enjoy a smooth digital experience.

Better developer experience
Drupal 10 has been designed to be more developer-friendly, which means that it is easier to use, customize, and extend. This can lead to faster development times, lower costs, and improved website functionality.

With the community and the Drupal development team actively supporting and providing new features, it is absolutely worth considering upgrading to Drupal 10 if you have not done so already.

If you are currently on Drupal 8 or Drupal 9, the upgrade path to Drupal 10 is mostly seamless. Unlike previous upgrades from Drupal 6 or 7 to 8, Drupal is now in a position to provide continuous upgrade paths and deliver the latest and greatest, safest and most secure options without a full site rebuild, finally!

Track Your Current List of Drupal Modules Prior to Upgrading to Drupal 10

You’ll want to make a list of the Drupal modules you’re using to track and check their compatibility with Drupal 10. Examine your site’s composer.json file to find out which modules are installed. If your site doesn’t have a composer.json in the root of the project directory, you should upgrade your site to composer managed before performing any further updates or upgrades. In previous iterations of Drupal, modules could be manually installed, so it is also important to confirm that all the modules present in your contrib modules folder are also listed in the composer.json. If not these will need to be transitioned to being managed in composer.

Lets prepare your module dependencies

Before upgrading your site, make sure that all of your modules work with the latest version of Drupal 10. This is especially important if you’ve installed custom modules or contributed to a particular module’s development.

Find out if your favorite contrib modules are Drupal 10-compliant at https://dev.acquia.com/drupal10/deprecation_status/projects.

You can also visit Drupal.org to see what versions are available for any given community contributed module.

Additionally if your organization’s website has custom modules or a custom theme, they should be reviewed for depreciations as the code may not be supported in Drupal 10.

Build It

Using composer you should now be able to simply run “composer update” to upgrade all your modules to Drupal 10 compatible versions.  Finalize your upgrade by running update.php on your Drupal install to perform database updates.  Optionally if you use configuration files in your Drupal installation, we recommend exporting configuration files to bring them up to the latest compatible settings.

If this sounds like too much work for you (or if you just don’t have time), consider hiring Drupal developers to do it.  It will save you in the long run. 

WDG’s Favorite Contrib Features in Drupal 10

• Gin administrative theme is now ready for Drupal 10. We love working with the Gin Administrative theme for its sleek modern look and feel, bringing out the best your site has to offer.  Gin theme allows individual users to tailor their administration experience and can be customized in house by our development team.  Detailed iconography helps to guild the user through the Drupal interface in an aesthetically pleasing manner.
• Paragraphs contrib module provided by the Drupal community is also now ready for Drupal 10.  We heavily make use of the paragraphs module to empower our content creators to make stunning content with ease, no code writing required.
• XML site map is ready for prime time. WDG does diligent work in the development of your website to ensure you have the best SEO we can provide, and we are happy to say that an XML site map with every project is a part of that commitment.

Is your technical team struggling with solutions to improve your website on Drupal? Connect with us to learn about leveraging integrations to upgrade to Drupal 10! Keep in mind that while moving from Drupal 9 to Drupal 10 is a one-time effort, regular maintenance and check ups are necessary to ensure continuous optimum performance. Stay up to date with us as we strive to provide updates as information becomes available!