Hello Drupalers,
The big news is that Aegir moves back — more precisely we leave Drupal 7 for Backdrop CMS.
We will cover several important topics in this update, beyond standard new BOA release details, so please read it carefully, because we normally don’t issue such important statements, and actually never announced anything like that since 2009.
It’s a long post, so let’s start with a little shorter version you can read in more detail further below.
We have good news for both latest Drupal 10.2 based sites and legacy Drupal 7 sites on Aegir. Your Aegir system now fully supports Drupal 10.2 and even Drupal 10.3
If you haven’t noticed, Aegir also stopped removing local Drush last year, which is important because Drupal 10.2 doesn’t work with any version older than Drush 12. You want to include Drush in your Drupal 8+ codebase if you plan to keep using it.
Talking about Drush and Drupal, please note that Drush no longer works for code updates, because Drupal with version 8 has moved to Composer and Drush newer than 8 removed old commands previously used for codebase updates. It still works for database updates and other site management commands, though.
We have figured out how to make Drush 8 able to manage Drupal 10.2 sites and make the local Drush invisible for Aegir by default — once you want to use site local Drush, run the Unlock Drush task on the Platform. Then before you run another task in Aegir run Platform Verify to hide the local Drush again. It’s an extra step but easy to use.
By the way, using system Drush 10 and 11 should be avoided because it no longer cooperates with Drupal 9 and 10 due to conflicting dependencies, while Drupal 10.2 requires Drush 12 which can’t be even installed globally. Just use site local Drush for Drupal 8+
We have even added a new „vdrush” command so you don’t need to type „vendor/bin/drush” over and over.
Despite announced End of Life the percentage of existing Drupal 7 sites is high and doesn’t change. Will it be extended again? We don’t count on it. We also believe that most of Drupal 7 sites will rather leave Drupal than rebuild on Drupal 9 or 10. It’s guaranteed.
Enter Backdrop CMS. We will make Aegir compatible with Backdrop and then replace its Drupal 7 based admin interface with Backdrop.
We believe that it’s the only viable way forward for any Drupal 7 site owner if they didn’t move to newer Drupal version for such a long time and we want to help Drupal 7 community to survive this apocalypse and migrate to much better and easy to manage alternative instead of leaving Drupal altogether.
That’s the shorter version. More details are below.
- Drupal 10.2 and Drupal 11 support in Aegir
- Drupal 7 End Of Life and what it means for Aegir
- Backdrop CMS support in Aegir
- BOA introducing Lite and Pro versions
- New options to extend your Aegir disk space
- New services to support Drupal sites maintenance
On Drupal 10.2 and Drupal 11 support in Aegir..
Your BOA server hosted with us will be upgraded to latest BOA release this weekend, which will bring any not yet upgraded Aegir instances to full compatibility with Drupal 10.2, unless you have run the self-upgrade already. For details on self-upgrade please check the built-in docs in ~/static/control/README.txt
On Drupal 7 End Of Life and what it means for Aegir..
Drupal 7 and its users seem to not listen to Drupal developers announcement about its fast approaching demise in January 2025 and according to w3techs stats still powers 45% of all existing Drupal sites (at least of those with update module enabled). What is even more interesting, 11% of all existing Drupal sites still runs on outdated and not supported Drupal 8. That’s not all. Over 21% of all existing Drupal sites still runs on Drupal 9, despite its EOL last year, and despite apparent easy upgrade path to Drupal 10. There are also hardcore fans of Drupal 6, still pouring 3% of all existing Drupal sites.
In non-tech speak, people don’t seem to appreciate the speed and direction of Drupal developers voyage anymore.
Looking at these stats it seems very clear now that Drupal gods decision to replace core with Symfony and leave Drupal 7 sites owners in the dust without any kind of upgrade path, with some migration tools only recently open-sourced by Acquia was the worst thing which happened to Drupal ecosystem ever.
We have witnessed and felt the consequences ourselves. Most of Drupal 7 sites owners we hosted when Drupal 8 was initially released gradually left our hosting.. for Wordpress. It’s not a coincidence that the biggest names in Drupal hosting, albeit younger than Omega8.cc decided to quit the Drupal-only business direction very early after Drupal 8 release, simply to survive, because it was becoming clear that Drupal-only is a dead-end for those burning investors money.
We were lucky to survive this exodus and keep our hosting Drupal-only, and still keep our own server stack open-sourced and available to anyone. Then all Aegir developers, apart from us, decided that Aegir is also a dead-end because no one believed it’s possible to make it compatible with Drupal 9 and Drupal 10.
That’s where our experience in the industry since 1997 made a difference. We have made Aegir able to support Drupal 9 sites and last year we have also made Aegir able to support Drupal 10 sites. It just works. But can we do the trick again when Drupal 7 will be officially declared dead? Yes, we can. But it will be significant move. We don’t want to gamble on this, even if it seems quite absurd to keep the EOL ultimatum for 45% of all existing Drupal sites owners. Who knows, maybe it will be extended again. But we can’t count on this.
On Backdrop CMS support in Aegir..
The decision has been made that we will also leave Drupal, at least as an engine behind Aegir frontend and will move Aegir to use Backdrop CMS, which initially will be supported as a new Aegir platform. While Backdrop CMS maintains a Drupal compatibility layer, there is still a serious work to be done to bring it up to speed with all Drush 8 backend commands we need to support Drupal 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and beyond.
On BOA introducing Lite and Pro versions..
Since we are currently the only entity supporting Aegir 3 development and the only entity behind BOA stack dedicated initially for Drupal only, we have also decided to introduce paid version of BOA stack for those interested in further development and migration from non-BOA legacy Aegir servers. It’s called BOA Pro.
There will be still a completely free to use BOA version available too, called BOA Lite, which will serve those who simple prefer to keep the LTS version of BOA on their servers with only security and bug fixes available, but no new features added. We are not in a position to effectively work for free for those leveraging BOA to build the same business themselves. This era has ended, because we need to move forward with significant work required to keep BOA still on the forward edge of high performance Drupal hosting.
On New options to extend your Aegir disk space..
This one is easy— please check all details on our website: https://omega8.cc/storage
On New services to support Drupal sites maintenance..
Also easy with details explained on our website at: https://omega8.cc/support
Questions? Comment? We are waiting for you at support@omega8.cc
We hope you will enjoy new Aegir and BOA features and perspectives for near future!
Robert and Marlene Omega8.cc Support