Updated on January 7, 2024.
The long-awaited Drupal 10 was released on December 14, 2022. Have you made the upgrade yet? We're always excited about software updates, but we understand that some users might feel overwhelmed by the changes. So we wrote this article to give you an easy introduction to Drupal 10. You'll learn why it's unwise to stay on an older version of Drupal (or any CMS). And you'll gain a broad understanding of the key benefits of moving to Drupal 10.
Don’t worry—if you still need guidance by the end of this post, you can watch our recent Drupal 10 webinar, or get custom training for your team.
Why Upgrade? Can’t I Just Keep Using an Earlier Version?
Drupal 9 became obsolete in November 2023 and Drupal 7 will reach end-of-life on January 5, 2025. Using an outdated version of Drupal means your website is more prone to downtime, bugs, and cyber attacks. It can get very expensive for your organization to implement and maintain security measures on its own—not to mention the cost of making custom infrastructure configurations to fix bugs. A far more cost effective option is to proactively move to Drupal 10.
On top of ensuring security, migrating to Drupal 10 will give you access to an improved CMS experience for content editors, site builders, and web developers. Take a look at some of the great new features below.
Easier Content Editing With CKEditor 5
Drupal 10 continues Drupal’s trend of enhancing the user experience for content creators and editors. CKEditor 5 is central to these improvements. Introduced as an experimental module in Drupal 9.3, it's now the default WYSIWYG editor in Drupal 10.
Content editors can work much more efficiently thanks to the clean new user interface and vastly improved tools for editing media, tables, styles, and lists. CKEditor 5 also offers premium features including tools for collaborating in real-time and exporting to Word and PDF.
Learn more about creating content in CKEditor 5 and check out our instructions for porting a CKEditor 5 plugin to Drupal 10.
Shiny New Themes
Content creators will appreciate Claro, which replaces Seven as the new default admin theme. Claro is notably less cluttered with more white space right out of the box—making it easier on the eyes, less intimidating to new users, and more accessible. Learn about creating content with Claro.
Olivero replaces Bartik as the new default front-end theme. Named after a lauded accessibility champion, it's WCAG AA compliant from the ground up, with a beautifully clean interface that features a high-contrast colour palette. Explore Olivero's best features.
New Dependencies
Drupal 10 has some noteworthy upgrades on the developer side, including Symfony 6.2 as its new underlying technology stack and a new version of PHP.
PHP 8.1, in addition to being a requirement for Symfony 6.2, promises a longer support lifetime for Drupal 10 as well as more stability and predictability in its dependency requirements.
Drupal 10 also uses modern JavaScript components to replace some uses of jQuery UI and jQuery, as well as a new version of Twig (3.x) which promises to be a faster, more secure, and more flexible PHP template engine. What's more, Drupal 10 will no longer support Internet Explorer 11.
Ready-to-Go Headless
Drupal has long been a dependable CMS for hybrid or fully headless configurations thanks to its support for REST, JSON, and GraphQL APIs. Drupal’s Decoupled Menus Initiative has sought to make headless design even easier by improving how JavaScript front-ends consume configurable menus managed in Drupal.
Beyond Drupal 10, the CMS's headless capacity will be expanded further by adding read-only menus for Drupal HTTP APIs. This will make it easier for front-end developers to consume menu data to build navigation systems.
Project Browser
Project Browser takes the mystery out of starting and building a new project in Drupal. This handy feature makes it easier for users—especially novice site builders—to hunt down the perfect modules for their projects. It lets you search contributed modules (over 50,000 of them!) within the Drupal admin interface, and offers more intuitive filters and a more visual layout for faster browsing.
Automatic Updates
Automatic updates have long been one of the most requested features for Drupal core. The Automatic Updates Initiative has been working hard behind the scenes to bring the Automatic Updates module to life—and it's expected to be included in a Drupal 10 minor release very soon.
The module will rely on three components:
- Public safety alerts about critical and highly critical updates from Drupal.org
- Readiness checks, which trigger warnings about issues that are blocking your website from receiving automatic updates
- In-place updates, which download the update from Drupal.org, check it and create backups of your files, perform the update, and restore your backup files if anything goes wrong
This module is yet another feature aimed at making life easier for content creators—particularly those who aren't technical but are tasked with managing Drupal websites. It promises to be a game-changer for anyone who struggles to check and run Drupal security updates when they're released.
Need Help With Upgrading?
Explore other relevant resources from Evolving Web:
📚 Reasons to migrate to Drupal 10
📚 Drupal 7 to Drupal 10 migration guide
📚 Recommended actions for Drupal 7's end of life
🧑🏫 Custom training to empower your team
Evolving Web is a Drupal Certified D7 EOL Migration Partner. We've been supporting organizations through complex migrations since 2007. Partner with us for your move to Drupal 10 and let us do the heavy lifting.