Why migrate from Drupal 7 to Backdrop CMS?

The end of life of Drupal 7 is getting closer day by day.  The current trend in the Drupal community is to migrate one's website to Drupal 9 before the end of the Drupal 7 lifecycle to take advantage of the new digital transformations that the new version of Drupal offers. More and more website owners are starting their migration process from Drupal 7 to Drupal 9. But others have not yet taken the plunge for several reasons, including The cost of migrating from Drupal 7 to Drupal 9. 

In this article, we will propose an alternative and especially give you some reasons to migrate now your website from Drupal 7 to Backdrop cms if it is not yet done. 

Migrate to Backdrop CMS. 

First of all, you should know that Backdrop CMS is a CMS resulting from a "fork" of Drupal, i.e. software created from the source code of Drupal 7, following divergent views or objectives among developers.

Backdrop CMS was created from the Drupal CMS in 2013 by two Drupal developers, Nate Lampton and Jen Lampton. This CMS aimed to improve and simplify the code and architecture of Drupal 7 while minimizing costs for the community.

The fact that many website owners are still on Drupal 7 may be due to a matter of budget, love for Drupal 7, and many other things that I could not list here. The end of the Drupal 7 lifecycle, also ending support from the Drupal community, is causing many website owners to think and consider an alternative.  

An alternative is to migrate directly to Backdrop CMS, at a lower cost, which will save you money and especially since your initial project is almost the same as the one it is migrated to because both systems understand each other and are based on the same API of Drupal 7. 

With a community around the Backdrop project, even if it's still under construction, just knowing that there are people who can help you grow in your project is a great asset. 

Below are some of the benefits of migrating to Backdrop CMS today: 

Benefits of migrating to Backdrop CMS

• Drupal 7 and Backdrop have the same advantages, but they differ in some aspects.
• Low and basic system requirements (which means affordable hosting)
• Some features not found in Drupal core are integrated into Backdrop core.
• Backdrop provides a powerful kernel with a large extension capability via contributed modules. Being a fork of Drupal 7, Backdrop takes advantage of the full potential of Drupal ;
• Updates and new version releases are scheduled in a calendar - this reduces the uncertainties related to the release of new modules or updates.

So to conclude we will just say that Backdrop becomes a serious alternative to Drupal 7 projects - which will not be maintained anymore. It will be very interesting to measure the effort of migrating from Drupal 7 to 9 compared to a transformation to Backdrop CMS.  So please feel free to contact us here so that we can assist you in your migration or upgrade process to Backdrop CMS.