Drupal 7 After End of Life: Migrate to Drupal 11 Now

Drupal 7 reached end of life on January 5, 2025. Since then Drupal.org publishes no security releases for Drupal 7 core or its contributed modules, and the Drupal Security Team no longer reviews reported issues. Many Drupal 7 sites are still online, and most of them run on PHP versions that are unsupported as well. If yours is one of them, the question is no longer whether to move, but how to do it with the least risk.

Why Migrate from Drupal 7?

A Drupal 7 site does not stop working, but every new vulnerability found in Drupal 7 or in the modules it uses stays open on your site. The risk grows each month, and so does the cost of keeping the site running: hosting providers retire old PHP versions, integrations change their APIs, and fewer developers want to work on a platform with no future.

Some vendors sell commercial extended support for Drupal 7. That can buy time for a site that has a migration date set, but it is a bridge, not a plan: it does not give you a modern editor, current PHP or new features, and you keep paying for it until you move.

Exploring Migration Paths: Why the Target Is Drupal 11

When this article was first published, the recommended target was Drupal 10. That has changed. Drupal 10 itself reaches end of life on December 9, 2026, so a migration to Drupal 10 today would need another upgrade almost immediately. The target for a Drupal 7 site is now Drupal 11.

There is a second reason not to wait. The core tools that migrate Drupal 7 content and configuration (Migrate Drupal and Migrate Drupal UI) are deprecated in Drupal 11.4 and will not be included in Drupal 12. Migrating while Drupal 11 is the current version lets you use the supported core tooling.

Moving from Drupal 7 is not an in-place update like moving between Drupal 9, 10 and 11. Drupal 7 and modern Drupal have different code, so you build a new Drupal 11 site and migrate content, users, files and configuration into it. That makes it a natural point to decide what the site should look like going forward:

• Like-for-like migration: the same structure and design on Drupal 11, with the editor experience of CKEditor 5 and the Claro admin theme, current PHP and full security support. The fastest route when the main concern is security.
• Migration with a redesign: you are rebuilding the theme anyway, so it is a good moment to fix navigation, accessibility, performance and outdated front-end libraries.
• Rebuild or move to another platform: for sites whose needs have changed completely. Drupal 11 is still often the best fit for content-heavy and multilingual sites, but it is worth asking the question.

Preparation is Key: Ensuring a Smooth Transition

A good migration starts on the old site. Update Drupal 7 core and modules to their last releases, and make a list of what the site actually uses: content types and fields, modules, views, user roles, integrations, custom code and redirects. Remove what is no longer needed; there is no point migrating it.

Then map each Drupal 7 module to its Drupal 11 equivalent. Many functions are now in core, others have a different contributed module, and a few have no direct successor and need a decision.

The migration itself is done with Drupal's Migrate API. For a simple site, Drupal's built-in upgrade interface at /upgrade on the new Drupal 11 site connects to the Drupal 7 database and imports content and configuration. For most real sites we prefer migrations defined in code and run with Drush, because they can be repeated, adjusted and re-run until the result is right, and a final delta migration can bring over content added while the new site was being built.

Some parts are never migrated automatically and need to be rebuilt:

• Views have to be recreated on the new site.
• The theme must be rebuilt: Drupal 11 uses Twig templates, which are incompatible with Drupal 7's PHPTemplate.
• Custom modules must be rewritten for the modern APIs. This is often the largest part of the work, especially when business logic lives in templates.
• Integrations with CRMs, payment systems and other services need to be reconnected and tested.

Plan the URLs as carefully as the content. Keep the old URLs where you can, and set up redirects for everything that changes, so you do not lose search rankings and inbound links on launch day.

How iTech4Web can help with Upgrade

We have migrated Drupal 7 sites to Drupal 11, including the Humanitarian Outcomes website, and we take care of the whole process: inventory, migration scripts, theme and custom code, testing, URL redirects and launch. For sites already on Drupal 8, 9 or 10, our Drupal 11 upgrade guide explains the in-place route.

See our Drupal upgrade and migration services: we review your site for free and send a quote with price, timeline and scope.