Thank You, Drupal 6!

Drupal 6 released eight years ago, and at the time, it was the best version of Drupal yet. There were loads of improvements, hundreds of contributors, major usability improvements, security and maintainability advancements, a friendlier installer, and much more. In many ways, Drupal 6 was the start of the modern era for Drupal. It led to a huge increase in adoption and hundreds of thousands of websites moved to Drupal 6. On a personal note, the company I founded developed loads of Drupal 6 websites and I did quite a bit of Drupal 6 coding along the way. Drupal 6 was a great thing for me, my team and our clients.

Eight years ago the iPhone 3G was also introduced. It was another great upgrade to a much-loved tool and a watershed moment in that product’s adoption and trajectory. The iPhone 3G was my first iPhone and I’ve had one ever since.

It’s 2016, however, and both of these tools are now past their prime. And, today, on February 24, 2016, the Drupal community officially ends support for Drupal 6. Drupal’s Security Team will no longer be safeguarding Drupal 6 and the whole Drupal 6 team can finally stand down and enjoy a well-deserved break.

In the intervening years, Drupal has, of course, come a long ways. The latest and greatest Drupal release, Drupal 8, made its debut in late 2015—the result of incredible effort put forth by 3,290 individual contributors from over 1,200 companies.

Naturally there are still many Drupal 6 sites out there. Hopefully, every single one of them has already made plans for the future. If not, there are a number of options available to site owners who might still be thinking it over or are arriving late to this news:

1. Do nothing. This, of course, is quite risky. Complex systems have bugs. Sometimes those bugs can lead to a security problem. If your website is important, this is a bad idea.

2. Find someone who will support Drupal 6. Several companies have offered to support Drupal 6 long-term, including Tag1 Consulting and myDropWizard. Talk to one of them if you’re not already in contact with someone who will support you!

3. Support Drupal 6 yourself. The companies officially offering Drupal 6 support have agreed to collaborate and share their releases via the Drupal 6 Long Term Support project. If you’re willing to put in the time to stay on top of releases, this might work for you.

4. Upgrade. There’s is an upgrade path from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7 as well as support for upgrading directly to Drupal 8. Drupal 7 is tried and true with a well-established ecosystem. Drupal 8 is a huge release that will be the new standard for Drupal for many years to come. Of course, Drupal 8 runs exceptionally well on Pantheon and here’s how you upgrade Drupal on a Pantheon site.

5. Rebuild. If it’s time to start over, the world is full of CMS tools. It’s a dizzying list of options. Starting fresh on Drupal is an excellent choice for organizations already using Drupal. If for some reason you decide that Drupal 8 isn’t right for your project, however, fear not! Pantheon supports both WordPress and Backdrop and we see many successful new sites launching on those platforms as well.

Regardless of how you build your website in the future, Drupal 6 has been an amazing ride. It made the web a better place and empowered millions of people to make the web their own.

Thank you, Drupal 6!