Web Developers' Honest Opinions of Drupal 8

First, to learn the overall sentiment regarding the migration, we asked our developers to rate the process out of 5 stars. The feedback? 3.7 stars.

Those 3.7 stars tell us two things: 1) Developers generally like the process and new technology and 2) As with anything, there is room for improvement.

To identify those aspects that could be changed to better the process, we then asked developers what they would change about the migration. Answers to this question ranged, but there was a common theme: Developers identified a desire for more common defaults in the setup. However, many responses noted that their wishes for increased automation from D7 to D8 were “unfortunately, unlikely [and] not possible”.

Next, we asked our developers to compare D7 and D8/9. Our favorite responses are:

Lastly, we asked our developers to rank from most advantageous to least advantageous, the benefits of migrating to Drupal 8 (and 9) from Drupal 7. Our developers identified these three Drupal 8 qualities as the most advantageous: ease of authoring, ongoing mobile mind shift, and transforming the customer experience.

With Drupal 8’s what-you-see-is-what-you-get text editor, writing is as fast and easy as you make it. This addition makes a big difference for those who need to edit and manage content on the site.

D8 is fully responsive. With it, your site can function flawlessly between touch screens, desktops, and mobile phones alike. Delivering rich mobile user experiences is more important now than ever, as, according to CIODive, “70% of internet traffic comes from mobile devices”.

Transforming the customer experience means that specific experiences are able to adapt to customers. D8 is able to do this by allowing quick and effective changes to be made in the name of engaging customer experiences.

Overall, the Drupal 8 migration may not be the easiest process, but it is well worth it. D8 is powerful, easy to use, and responsive. Our dev team appreciates the new additions and believes your business will benefit from performing the upgrades sooner rather than later. Once Drupal 6 and 7 become obsolete, the migration will be necessary for basic site updates. To avoid falling behind with upgrades, we recommend making the migration today!