Updated March 4, 2023
Difference Between Drupal 7 and Drupal 8
Drupal 7 was launched by the Drupal organization. There are many features and improvements that have been released with the release of Drupal 7 for both the developers and users for the efficient use of this content management system. Drupal 7 helped a lot for developers like enhancement in themes, modules, multi-support, etc. Drupal 8 was released by Drupal organization with almost 200 new built-in features and many improvements. Drupal 8 released with the new page editor and other optimized options to improve more on multi-language features and globalisation. Drupal 8 has a simpler web services configuration, a wide range of field types, views, content types, improving website loading speed, and accessibility of the website, etc.
- Drupal is referred to as a content management framework, blog software, and community. It is developed or created by Dries Buytaert. It was released in the year 2000. It is also known as an open-source content management system. It mainly supports the operating system Unix-like and windows. Drupal is written in PHP language and available in multi-languages for developers and users.
- Drupal had a standard release known as “ Drupal Core, ” which provides a wide extent of its features and functions. It contains the basic features of a content management system that includes account registration and maintenance, menu management, customizing page layout, system administration, and RSS feeds. It can provide or treat as a simple website, user blog, online forums, community website using user content.
- Drupal’s core theme provides a different feel and looks to website and blogs. Drupal core provides different features like advanced search, books, blogs, comments, Multi-level menu system, multi-site support, multi-user content creation, security and the new update, workflow tools, user profiles, access static and logging which really helps in creating site and blogs.
- Drupal has based on the architecture pattern, which is known as Presentation Abstraction Control (PAC). Drupal is being referred to as a flexible and richly featured content management system. Drupal has a great community support system and an online forum to help out developers. It also provides a secure API and SEO friendly. Drupal is a scalable and open platform for web content management and digital experiences. It provides deep capabilities and endless flexibility for developing websites or writing blogs.
- Drupal 8 is generally referred to as a heavy system as compared to Drupal 7, because of which it is criticized for being slow and giving less performance. But this assumption is wrong; Drupal 8 is more extensible as it is heavy and makes it faster, scalable, caching of content, handling of views, authenticated drag and drop page, etc.
Head To Head Comparison Between Drupal 7 and Drupal 8 (Infographics)
Below is the top 6 difference between Drupal 7 vs Drupal 8
Key differences between Drupal 7 and Drupal 8
Both are popular choices in the market; let us discuss some of the major difference:
- Drupal 7 cached page delivery performance is much better as it takes less memory and easy to parse. Drupal 8 cached delivery performance is poor comparatively.
- Drupal 8 comes with routing, which the developers use to develop more SEO (search engine optimization) friendly URLs compared to Drupal 7.
- In Drupal 8, oops concepts can be used with the implementation of the Symfony framework, and it makes Drupal 8 stronger as compared to Drupal 7.
- Drupal 7 develop less secure applications. With the help of Drupal 8, secured and robust applications can be developed easily.
- In Drupal 8, there are new field types are added as compared to Drupal 7. It helps developers to add the fields easily, and these can be added by simply defining field name and field type.
- In Drupal 7, an edit of content cannot be done from the UI of a website. In Drupal 8, a new module is added, which helps to edit of content from the website UI.
- In Drupal 7, views are used as modules. In Drupal 8, views are used as core components and can be easily accessed and customized.
- In Drupal 7, resize of images needs to be done according to screen size with the help of image styles. In Drupal 8, a wide range of styles available for image and for different screens with different screen sizes.
- For Drupal 7, it requires any number of modules for the development of a Multilanguage website. In Drupal 8, four key core modules like language, content, interface and configure translation make it easier to develop a multilingual website.
- Drupal 7 requires a number of modules to create a web service. In Drupal 8, HAL, HTTP authentication, restful web services, and serialization have been improved to make the website’s development easy.
- Drupal 7 has a wide range of plugins to implement complex functionality for applications. Drupal 8 does not support the plugins of Drupal 7, which makes it difficult for developers to make the application more powerful and customized.
Drupal 7 vs Drupal 8 Comparison Table
The primary comparison is discussed below:
| The basis of comparison | Drupal 7 | Drupal 8 |
| Framework | Drupal 7 does not have a powerful framework | Drupal 8 has a Symfony framework, which makes it powerful. |
| Multilingual | Drupal 7 support some languages. | Drupal 8 supports more languages as compared to Drupal 7 |
| Theme Engine | In Drupal 7, themes and PHP templates are used. | In Drupal 8, the new theme engine Twig is used. |
| Text Editor | In Drupal 7, there is no powerful text editor. | Drupal 8 has a new text editor- CKEditor. |
| Features | Drupal 7 was released with a few new features and improvements. | Drupal 8 was released with almost 200 new features and many improvements. |
| Released | It released in the year 2011 | It released in the year 2015 |
Conclusion
In the Drupal 7 vs Drupal 8 article, we have seen both Drupal 7 vs Drupal 8 are widely used for the content management system. Drupal 8 comes with a symphony framework and twig theme engine, which makes the application development faster, interesting and easy. From the above difference between Drupal 7 and Drupal 8, it’s clear that Drupal 8 has more advantages to develop the application for developers and users to use.
Drupal 7 vs Drupal 8 both are having different syntax, which makes it easy to define the platform used for the application. Both Drupal 7 vs Drupal 8 are having their own pros and cons; each can be used based on the requirements, and they are easy to learn and grasp.
Recommended Article
This has been a guide to the top differences between Drupal 7 vs Drupal 8. Here we also discuss the 8 key differences with infographics and comparison table. You may also have a look at the following articles to learn more –
