DRUPAL 9 HAS BEEN RELEASED!

Drupal 9 release day has arrived. Hooray! But what does this really mean for you and your website?

In 2015, the last most recent major version of Drupal was released - Drupal 8. The Drupal 8 release saw fundamental architectural changes, which meant that upgrades from previous versions meant a complete rebuild of your website and a complete migration of content.
However, the Drupal 8 release was a little different. As part of this rebuild, Drupal's continuous innovation model emerged.

Drupal Continuous Innovation Model

The continuous innovation model allows for frequent releases of new features, API additions, and an easy upgrade path. As a result, there are no longer major architectural changes when upgrading from Drupal 8 to 9. No migration is required and there is no need to build a new site unless you want to.
While Drupal has always had a wealth of new features and functionality developed and released by the community, the release model lacked the direction and quality control that a world-leading CMS should provide. The Drupal 8 release model allowed for significant, backwards-compatible enhancements in smaller, more frequent releases. Therefore, instead of waiting years for new features, users get significant advances in functionality with each smaller release, approximately every 6 months, with patches and security updates and bug fixes released every 2-3 weeks. For example, Drupal's media and asset management tools needed improvements. Starting with Drupal 8.4, the contributed "media" module was greatly improved and then introduced into Drupal core. In every minor version update since then, these tools have been further improved.

So what does this mean for Drupal 9?

It means that this time, upgrading from a major version, Drupal 8, to the newest version, Drupal 9, does not mean a complete rebuild of your website and a complete migration of content.
However, there is still work to be done to prepare your website for the upgrade. While you don't need to do it right away (Drupal 7 and 8 will reach end-of-life in November 2021), you should be preparing your roadmap now.