risks of continuing in drupal 6 and your way out
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Risks of Continuing In Drupal 6 and Your Way Out
Drupal 8, the world’s favorite open source content management platform just
got better. Drupal 8 is the new standard for creating incredible digital
experiences. In the meantime, Drupal 6 reached its End of Life by Feb
2016 https://www.drupal.org/drupal-6-eol, in accordance with the Drupal
community’s policy of only providing active support for two major versions of
Drupal at any given time.
Drupal 6 Risks:
The D6 websites will continue to function exactly how its running right now. But
it certainly accelerates the need to update your site to a supported version of
Drupal.
Community will not provide any security updates for Drupal 6 anymore.
Maintainers of contributed modules may or may not provide security patches for
their module but, community will no longer officially support it.
PHP 7 came out in late 2015, Drupal 6 use PHP versions between 5.25 and 5.3
which are highly outdated. Site incompatibility with mandatory server security
upgrades that fall out of sync with Drupal 6 Site may become vulnerable and
open to various security attacks. It is possible to compromise the complete site
and escalate server access due to a vulnerability exposed by website code.
If the site compromised, the hacker may get complete access to the server, he
may try to exploit the site.
May add spam contents, videos, links throughout the site.
May result in defaming the site and reduce the user traffic to the site.
May uses your server to send spam emails.
May get access to sensitive data from the website or server.
Sites may also start to face poor site performance. Implementation of responsive
design or any integration of complex nature would deem unsupported by Drupal
6 or too time and cost expensive. It all boils down to the fact that one cannot keep
up with modern development practices and stay outdated.
Options For Drupal 6:
1. Purchase a Drupal 6 maintenance package to keep away from security
risks.
2. Upgrade to the latest version(Drupal 7 or 8)
Drupal 6 Maintenance:
To know the updated Drupal usage
statistics: https://www.drupal.org/project/usage/drupal.
More than 110,000 Drupal 6 sites are running across the world. Drupal End of
Life(EOL) means the Drupal community and security team officially stopped
Drupal 6 support. It does not mean Drupal 6 will not work anymore. Even
25,000+ Drupal 5 sites are running without any hassles.
The main thing is, if the support is available at the right time there won't be any
worry about continuing sites with Drupal 6. And also it's not mandatory that all
Drupal 6 sites need to upgrade. If the website is good enough to continue in
Drupal 6, then you can better think of selecting any Drupal support packages
available across the communities. Many organizations ready to provide Drupal 6
support and maintenance.
Interesting comment from Drupal inventor Dries buytaert, about Drupal 6
maintenance (Ref: http://buytaert.net/drupal-6-support)
“Find an organization that will provide extended support for Drupal 6. We hope
that organizations that rely on Drupal 6 will step up to help maintain it after
community support winds down. ”
So continuing sites with Drupal 6 is risk free if you opt for Drupal 6 maintenance
package.
Upgrade To The Newer Version (Drupal 7 Or 8):
Upgrade is the best choice for an existing Drupal 6 site. Upgrade your site to
new versions will keep you updated in terms of latest technologies like web
services, responsive theme, multilingual etc.
Read more about Drupal 6 upgrade.
If you are ready to upgrade your website, you must start think of which version
need to select.
Which Version Is Suitable For My Site To Upgrade?
In deciding between Drupal 7 and Drupal 8, several factors should be taken into
consideration. Drupal 8 is newer will be supported longer and contains more
features and enhancements than Drupal 7. Therefore, if all else is equal, use
Drupal 8. However, the releases of contributed modules, themes, translations,
and installation profiles compatible with each major Drupal release series
sometimes lag behind Drupal itself, so if the functionality you need is not yet
available for Drupal 8, this may affect your decision.
How We Can Help You?
For a thorough assessment and professional guidance on upgrading your Drupal
website, Drupal Geeks can be reached out @ 312-340-7112 or send an email