Drupal 7

So why does BPS have a whole new look?  Because it was running on Drupal 7, which is reaching End of Life.  A new platform had to be found to house our information, and quickly, as time was running out.  We investigated quite a few options, all of which had their problems, mostly too large of a financial impact.  In all the research, we happened on one option that had not received extensive advertising, but turned out to be this non-profit's best option.

Here's what we were faced with:

Drupal 7 End of Life

Drupal 7 security support ends on 5 January 2025. This is the final extension of Drupal 7 end of life – Drupal 7 will not receive security updates after this date. But don’t worry! The Drupal Association and Drupal Security Team are providing resources, tools, and partners to empower you to migrate your Drupal 7 sites.

This date marks 14 years since Drupal 7’s original release. While we’re proud of what Drupal 7 accomplished, we are looking forward to focusing resources on modern Drupal (Drupal 10, Drupal 11 and beyond!)

What happens on 5 January 2025?
After 5 January 2025, Drupal 7 will no longer receive security or compatibility updates. If you are still running Drupal 7 beyond this date, your website will be vulnerable to security risks and may face compatibility issues. Failure to address these issues can put your website out of compliance with FedRAMP, PCI, HIPAA, SOC 2, and other compliance standards.

The Drupal site quote above mentions several options to keep from losing your website, including migrating to the latest Drupal version and purchasing extended support.  Each of these options can be quite expensive.  This BPS website you are now reading is a small to medium site (about 2000 pages/ nodes), and the prices we were quoted for converting from Drupal 7 STARTED at $20,000 for small sites, and apparently, $200 per hour is a "good price".   I actually read about one site (who went with another vendor) stating they had SAVED over $500,000 using that vendor.  What must the project have cost, if they saved that much????

However, there are a number of much cheaper options that aren't mentioned on the above site.  Since Drupal is an open source product, several groups have created forks - basically copied the Drupal code base, then modified the code by adding, removing, streamlining, and/or simplifying operations.  Backdrop CMS is one such fork, started in 2013 when Drupal first started discussing Drupal 7 EOL.  Backdrop CMS contributors are focused on small business, colleges, personal websites, and non-profits.  Most of the Backdrop programmers are fluent in various versions of Drupal, from old Drupal 5 and 6, to the latest versions, and are current contributors to the latest Drupal projects.  Some also have proficiency in WordPress, and have devoted years of their time making Backdrop a success.  Because of their extensive knowledge, they can quickly evaluate your site, and determine whether one of these cheaper options would be appropriate.

Check out the Backdrop CMS Forums, or join us each Wednesday at 7pm GMT (1pm CST) for something called "Office Hours", where programmers and other curious people show up to discuss their latest project, ask for assistance, or ask if Backdrop is suitable for their website.  The first day I showed up at Office Hours, they helped me do a preliminary conversion of my Drupal 7 site to a Backdrop site - during Office Hours!  Still had some clean-up to do myself, but it was impressive.  The similarities to Drupal are so close, the learning curve is greatly minimized.  So join us next Wednesday, or post on the Backdrop CMS forum, and learn more about another option to save your Drupal 7 website.  Read an overview of the conversion process written by another vendor.