The short answer is: start planning your upgrade now!
With end-of-life for Drupal 7 security support set for the end of 2021 and the release of Drupal 9 this summer, when is a good time to upgrade and consider hosting changes? What are the best options for keeping an Apigee developer portal current? Many API teams are asking these questions.
Historically, Apigee supplied a Drupal 7 developer portal including hosting and support. Now, changes are on the horizon and Google will no longer provide hosting for Drupal-based Apigee developer portals:
“Apigee D7P customers should evaluate the available alternatives and move D7P from Apigee hosted platforms - Pantheon or Acquia - to a self-managed/self-hosted approach.” [Apigee D7 FAQ]
Tap Into Expertise: Chapter Three Built Apigee’s Drupal 8 Portal
Chapter Three recommends using Pantheon or Acquia as your platform hosting provider. For platform technical and design support working with Chapter Three, a Google/Apigee partner and full-service digital agency, guarantees that your team will have all the support you need.
While you evaluate hosting requirements, it is also a good time to plan your Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 upgrade.Drupal 7 has announced its end of life date, and after this date Drupal 7 will no longer be supported or get security updates.
To mitigate this Google has invested in, developed and actively maintains a Drupal 8 version of the Apigee developer portal. This version is a professionally designed Drupal installation built by Chapter Three. Our partnership with Google ensures that the Drupal 8 portal is up-to-date and provides a far superior product to portal built on D7. Apigee is actively recommending all Drupal 7 customers to upgrade their dev portal site as soon as possible:
“Drupal 8 represents the path forward for those who wish to remain on the Drupal track. While the migration effort from D7P to D8P is non-trivial, D8P offers a better trajectory for any customer who prefers a self-managed developer portal.” [Apigee D7 FAQ]
How hard will this be?
How hard is it to upgrade my developer portal from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8? The level of effort is directly related to how complex your current site is. Sites that have complex themes and lots of custom code will be more challenging to upgrade to D8. However, the majority of developer portals out there are not that complex and will be easy to upgrade. We love migration projects! The Chapter Three team are experts at Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 migrations (we’ve done well over a hundred!) and we'll help your team navigate the process. The benefits of being on Drupal 8 far outweigh the pain of doing the work.
The Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 upgrade will be the last challenging upgrade for Drupal users.
Historically major Drupal version upgrades have been significant and occasionally catastrophic, i.e., a site rebuild was required. Realizing this unsustainable model, the newest versions of Drupal 8 present a clean path for upgrading to Drupal 9 and beyond. Upgrading between major version numbers now will be a painless, and backward compatible process. This future-proofs development work that is done in Drupal 8 and makes keeping your portal current easy.
The main reasons to upgrade your Drupal 7 developer portal now:
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Drupal 7 is going to be unsupported in 2021
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Drupal 9 (backwards compatible to Drupal 8.8), launches this summer. It will provide an easy upgrade path from any Drupal 8 portal
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Investing any further in Drupal 7 is no longer worth it
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It is a good time to re-evaluate your developer portal and make improvements to it
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Drupal 8 Apigee developer portal is a significant improvement over the Drupal 7 version
The best way to get your upgrade done is to work with Apigee Partners like Chapter Three. We built the Drupal 8 Apigee Portal Profile and will guide your team through a smooth transition. Contact us today and let's chat about it.
