When will support end for Drupal 6? (Infographic)

With today’s Drupal 8 release the clock starts ticking for Drupal 6 support. Typically, the Drupal community supports a version through the next

version, but support for Drupal was extended for an additional 3 months. Which means that support for Drupal 6 will end 3 months from today on February 19th, 2016. This doesn’t give you much time to upgrade.

You don’t want to be caught running an unsupported version of Drupal - especially if you’re running any kind of commerce site or if your site captures sensitive information. 

WHAT’S INVOLVED WITH UPGRADING DRUPAL 6?

You’ll definitely want to include a redesign in your upgrade plan. A lot has changed in the past few years: 20 - 30% of web traffic is coming from tablets and mobile devices and these numbers are growing. Your new design should support touch screens and adjust to hundreds of screen sizes. An upgrade/redesign is a great time to assess your needs and analytics from your existing website can provide valuable input into design decisions.

Data will be moved to the upgraded website either through an in-place upgrade or by migrating data. Upgrades from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7 have great support but most in-place upgrades need a bit of effort even after Drupal core and modules have been upgraded. For some sites an interim upgrade to Drupal 7 won't save you much effort. You may want to consider jumping to Drupal 8.

Take a look at my previous post “Drupal Upgrade Decision Tree” for more information.