Moving from Drupal 7 to Drupal 9
What’s involved in upgrading my website?
The transition from Drupal 7 (D7) to Drupal 9 (D9) will require a full website rebuild.
To help your transition, we suggest you review your website content. Now’s the time to remove information you no longer need and identify features you would like to keep.
There are two paths forward in upgrading your website:
-
Move to Drupal 8 (D8) now, then move to D9
If you have the budget now, you can rebuild your website on D8. From there you can update to D9 when the GovCMS distribution is available.
We encourage you to take this path, as the D8 distribution is available and stable. The move from D8 to D9 will be relatively easy, because we’re creating parity of modules between D8 and D9.
-
Move directly to D9
It is possible to rebuild your website on D9 when the GovCMS distribution is available.
If this is your plan let us know. We can help guide you. Contact govcms@finance.gov.au
Building or rebuilding your website
The process of rebuilding your website can feel overwhelming — there’s a lot to consider. Check out the building a new website section in the support centre for guidance on this process.
We suggest you start by focussing on the following four things you will need to do as part of your transition from D7:
- Ensure you have a website proposal in place with us for the transition.
- Do you have the skills to complete your project in house or will you need a development partner?
- Will you build your new website on or off the GovCMS platform?
- Let us know in advance when you plan to launch your new website
We have 134 GovCMS websites transitioning from D7. We need to set time aside for each agency to work through some final checks to ensure you have a smooth transition.
Functionality parity progress
We’re working towards creating parity of functionality between the GovCMS D7 and D9 distributions. This is because D7 architecture is very different to the D9 architecture.
We’ve just had conversations with your business areas. Our next step is to work with you to conduct functional and feature audits on your websites. This will help inform our direction for functional parity from D7 to D9.
Below is a snapshot of our progress. Below is a snapshot of our progress. We will provide more detailed information as the project progresses.
If you have any questions, submit your D9 questions through the Ask us form in the channel.
Specific module progress
This is the list of functions/modules that have similar or equivalent functionality in the D8 distribution. They are already on the roadmap to be D9 compatible.
| D7 Module | Current D8 Version |
|---|---|
| Big Menu | 2.0.0-rc1 |
| Chaos Tools Suite (ctools) | 3.2 |
| Chosen | 2.9 |
| Context | 4.0-beta2 |
| Diff | 1.0 |
| Display Suite | 3.9 |
| Encrypt | 3.0-rc2 |
| Field Group | 3.1 |
| Focal Point | 1.4 |
| Google Analytics | 3.0 |
| GovCMS DLM | 1.3 |
| Key | 1.14 |
| LinkIt | 5.0-beta9 |
| Login Security | 1.5 |
| Menu block | 1.6 |
| Menu trail by path | 1.1 |
| Metatag | 1.9 |
| Mini site | 1.3 |
| Module Filter | 3.1 |
| Panels | 4.4 |
| Paragraphs | 1.12 |
| Password Policy | 3.0-beta1 |
| Pathauto | 1.8 |
| reCAPTCHA | 2.4 |
| Redirect | 1.3 |
| RobotsTxt | 1.4 |
| Search API | 1.16 |
| Search API Solr | 3.9 |
| Security Kit | 1.1 |
| Shield | 1.4 |
| Swift Mailer | 1.0-beta2 |
| Token | 1.7 |
| Two-factor Authentication (TFA) | 1.0-alpha4 |
| Webform | 5.13 |
This is the list of functions/modules that have similar or equivalent functionality as part of D8/D9 Drupal Core.
| D7 Module |
|---|
| Administration Views |
| Bean |
| Bean Panels |
| CORS |
| D7 Media |
| Date |
| Default config |
| Elements |
| Link |
| Navbar |
| Phone |
| Picture |
| Universally Unique IDentifier |
| Video Filter (remote video can be configured in Drupal Core) |
| Views |
| view_unpublished |
| Workbench Moderation (now known as Content Moderation) |
| Wysiwyg |
| WYSIWYG Filter |
These are priority functions/modules currently under review to be added to the D9 distribution.
| D7 Module | Issue | Direction |
|---|---|---|
| Accessible Forms | Module not available in 8 | Improved labelling is now available in Webform module |
| Breakpoints | Module not available in 8 | Breakpoints can be achieved at the theme level by using responsive or modern starter themes or creating your own breakpoints using Media Queries in CSS . |
| CAPTCHA | Superseded | Superseded by ReCAPTCHA |
| Funnelback Search Integration | Module in Beta | Funnelback can be styled and integrated: · Search fields can be included via a block or theming level of your site
|
| Google Site Search | Service discontinued | Google Site Search is no longer offered by Google |
| Shiny | Module not available in 8 | Replaced with Adminimal Theme for Administration |
| Twitter Block | Module not available in 8 | You can use Twitter's Publish tool to create:
· Follow / Share / Mention / Hashtag message buttons · Once created, these Twitter components can be included in your site at a block or theme level. |
| Webform HTML Textarea | Module not available in 8 | HTML Textarea fields are now available in Webform module |
| Webform Phone Number | Module not available in 8 | Phone Numbers fields are now available in Webform module |
| WYSIWYG Abbreviation | Module not available in 8 | The ABBR tag can be included in content. It can be added to the HTML text format either by: · Adding the ABBR tag and relevant text via Source when editing our your content OR · Added via a custom style and available from the Styles dropdown in the WYSIWYG |
| Zen | Website owners can add themes including Zen to their site if they choose |
This is the list of functions/modules that will not be added to D9.
| D7 Module | Issue | Direction |
|---|---|---|
| Accessible Forms | Module not available in 8 | Improved labelling is now available in Webform module |
| Breakpoints | Module not available in 8 | Breakpoints can be achieved at the theme level by using responsive or modern starter themes or creating your own breakpoints using Media Queries in CSS . |
| CAPTCHA | Superseded | Superseded by ReCAPTCHA |
| Funnelback Search Integration | Module in Beta | Funnelback can be styled and integrated:
|
| Google Site Search | Service discontinued | Google Site Search is no longer offered by Google |
| Shiny | Module not available in 8 | Replaced with Adminimal Theme for Administration |
| Twitter Block | Module not available in 8 | You can use Twitter's Publish tool to create:
Once created, these Twitter components can be included in your site at a block or theme level. |
| Webform HTML Textarea | Module not available in 8 | HTML Textarea fields are now available in Webform module |
| Webform Phone Number | Module not available in 8 | Phone Numbers fields are now available in Webform module |
| WYSIWYG Abbreviation | Module not available in 8 |
The ABBR tag can be included in content. It can be added to the HTML text format either by:
|
| Zen | Website owners can add themes including Zen to their site if they choose |
These are functions/modules yet to be reviewed for the D7-D9 roadmap. We will provide more detailed information as the project progresses.
| D7 Module | Issue |
|---|---|
| AGLS Metadata | Module not available in 8 |
| ClamAV | |
| Crumbs | Module not available in 8 |
| Custom Contextual Links | Module not available in 8 |
| Default Content | |
| DraggableViews | |
| Entity API | |
| Entity cache | Module not available in 8 |
| Entity reference | Module not available in 8 |
| Escape Admin | Module not available in 8 |
| Event log | Module not available in 8 |
| Facet API | Module not available in 8 |
| Favicon | Module not available in 8 |
| Features | |
| Feeds | |
| Feeds Tamper | |
| Field Redirection | |
| File Entity | |
| File Lock | Module not available in 8 |
| Flood control | |
| Global redirect | Module not available in 8 |
| Google Chart Tools | Module not available in 8 |
| govCMS CKAN | Module not available in 8 |
| Hierarchical Select | Module not available in 8 |
| Honeypot | |
| Image Link Formatter | Module not available in 8 |
| Job Scheduler | |
| Libraries API | |
| Link checker | Module not available in 8 |
| LinkIt panel pages | Module not available in 8 |
| Login Destination | |
| Mail System | |
| Maintenance Mode Permissions | Module not available in 8 |
| Media: oEmbed | Module not available in 8 |
| Menu Attributes | Module not available in 8 |
| Module permissions | |
| Multi-path attributes | |
| Node clone | Module not available in 8 |
| OAuth 1.0 | |
| OpenAccess | Module not available in 8 |
| Paranoia | |
| Pathologic | |
| PCI Update | Module not available in 8 |
| Poll Enhancements | Module not available in 8 |
| Quick Tabs | |
| Real AES | |
| Redirect 403 to User Login | |
| Role Delegation | |
| Scheduler | |
| Scheduler Workbench Integration | Module not available in 8 |
| Search 404 | |
| Search API Database Search | |
| Search API Pages | |
| Service links | |
| Services | |
| Services Views | |
| Simple aggregation | Module not available in 8 |
| Site map | Module not available in 8 |
| SpamSpan filter | |
| Strongarm | Module not available in 8 |
| Superfish | |
| Taxonomy Manager | |
| TFA Basic plugins | Module not available in 8 |
| TOC filter | |
| Token tweaks | Module not available in 8 |
| Transliteration | Module not available in 8 |
| User protect | |
| Username Enumeration Prevention | |
| UUID Features Integration | Module not available in 8 |
| Viewfield | |
| Views Bulk Operations (VBO) | |
| Views Datasource | Module not available in 8 |
| Webform Clear | Module not available in 8 |
| Webform Encrypt | |
| Workbench | |
| Workbench Access | |
| XML sitemap |