Organic For Drupal Websites | Audience and Revenue Comparison

Dear Publisher,

Drupal announced in June 2023 that it would be extending the end-of-life date for Drupal 7 for a third and final time. While this might seem like a relief on the surface, the announcement only serves to extend the gray cloud hanging over the heads of hundreds of thousands of sites who have relied on Drupal’s software to support their publishing efforts for the past decade.

Any publisher currently using Drupal 7 faces an uncertain future.

In this overview, we’ll share no-nonsense insights about the challenges all Drupal 7 publishers face over the coming months (some of which have probably begun without your knowledge). Then, we’ll share our take on the most sustainable options to grow your audience and revenue when saying goodbye to Drupal 7.

Let’s find a CMS solution that will provide you the stability and support you need for decades to come.

Sincerely,
Justin DeMaris, CEO & Co-Founder, Organic

Drupal Releases Are Unpredictable

Accelerated Drupal Releases, Higher Maintenance Costs

Drupal has had a history of highly inconsistent release cycles. As highlighted by OSTraining , a product roadmap for Drupal was not available until April 2018, despite the product being on the market since 2001. They showcase how problematic this disorganization was for Drupal developers around that time, stating that “the development of Drupal 8 dragged on for over 5 years”.

In Dries Buytaert’s (founder of Drupal) blog post, he shared these three roadmap items:

Drupal 7 will be end-of-life in November 2021
Drupal 9 will be released in 2020
Drupal 8 will be end-of-life in November 2021

Two of the three targets were met, but Drupal elected to defer the Drupal 7 end-of-life date three times:

Unofficially in 2021, when November target was not met.
Officially in February 2022 to November 2023.
Officially in June 2022 to January 2025.

It’s easy to understand why they would want to extend this date, as 47% of all Drupal sites are running on Drupal 7.

But publishers are put in an uncomfortable position when it comes to what to do next. Drupal is now releasing at a near-monthly frequency, with some major questions around how long you’ll get a usable site on their next release before needing to migrate* again:

Drupal 8: Reached end-of-life in 2021 (6 years)
Drupal 9: Will reach end-of-life in 2023 (3 years)
Drupal 10: Released in 2022 (TBD)

* Because of significant differences in architecture, Drupal has already categorized the move from Drupal 7 to Drupal 10 as a migration rather than an update/upgrade.

Publishers deserve stability and clarity about the future support for their CMS.

Real-World Impacts Started August 1, 2023

Reduced Drupal 7 Security & Support

When digging into the final extension’s security advisory, it’s clear to see the real-world impacts that are much more pressing issues for publishers to address than a January 2025 target date would imply. Starting August 1, 2023:

The Drupal Security Team may publicly post moderately critical issues affecting Drupal 7 in the public issue queue for resolution instead of addressing them directly.
Community modules and themes that are flagged as “unsupported” (by the developers or by the Drupal team) will not be able to return to “supported” status.
Drupal 7 will no longer support PHP 5.5 or lower, resulting in necessary updates to even sites that try to stick it out on Drupal 7 longer.
Windows-only issues will no longer receive security fixes.
Drupal.org will no longer create Drupal 7 distribution packages.

With heightened security risks and reduced support, publishers cannot afford to wait for the official end-of-life date to migrate their sites.

Organic: A Modern CMS, For Publishers

Organic: A Publisher-Enhanced CMS Experience

We designed our CMS solution to supercharge sustainable audience and revenue growth for publishers. Our modern engineering architecture allows media publishers to unlock more value for their visitors and their staff than WordPress alone with:

Organic’s Headless Frontend: Built using Next.js and React instead of an outdated approach blending UX code with backend PHP, Organic's headless frontend connects to the editorial backend via a GraphQL API to boost page speed and performance.
Expanded Wordpress Toolsets: Organic combines the familiar, intuitive Wordpress editorial experience with specifically-designed features to increase visibility to Google, as well as syndication feeds including Apple News, Flipboard, and Smartnews.

Unique benefits of Organic:

A fast, flexible frontend for designing engaging audience experiences while simultaneously improving search rankings.
Vetted, out-of-the-box features specifically for publishing, including schema blocks, syndication controls, recirculation modules, author pages to emphasize E-E-A-T, sponsored content blocks, commerce tools, and media SaaS integrations yielding improved SEO, syndication, and earnings.
Lower engineering costs due to our modern, developer-friendly codebase that enables faster redesigns and top-tier site stability.

Features for Publishers

Drupal Core

Wordpress

Organic

Web Schema for Content Blocks

Affiliate Marketing Blocks for Commerce Articles

Amazon Auto-Linking

Content Blocks for Improving Google E-E-A-T Scores

Options for Hosting and 24-hour DevOps Support

Internal Taxonomies for Cohort Analysis

Syndication Controls

React Frontend for Easy Redesigns

Preferred Engineering Partners for Custom Projects

Frontend Component and Template Library

“I am deeply involved in the CMS in the sense that I use it every day, multiple times a day. As journalists know, the only way to get content out there in the world is through a CMS—and so I am “knee deep” in the CMS all the time. As I have worked with a lot of CMS’s, I would say that the CMS we're using right now [at Popular Science] is the best that I've seen. Organic is easy to use, it feels stable, and it’s intuitive and quick, which is critical when I need to get a story up as quickly as possible."

Rob Verger

Technology Editor, Popular Science

Designed for Developers

Top-Notch Developer Support

Using Organic, publishers realize significant engineering cost savings. Development projects are faster for engineers thanks to Organic's intuitive headless architecture. Organic also replaces rote, ongoing engineering costs with self-service tools made for editors. Finally, Organic also provides hosting and security infrastructure that makes publisher sites faster, more GDPR/CCPA compliant, more secure, and more reliable.

That's why today's engineers love building on Organic.

"I strongly advise publishers move to Organic instead of another WordPress platform. The architecture is superior and it is faster to build on Organic versus any standard WordPress platform. Working with Organic, we can just focus on user experience as the technology removes all of the Deveops stuff that normally takes up so much of our time.”

Greg Allen

CEO & Founder, First + Third

A delicious approach with an appetizing layout, ingredients, introduction, and step-by-step instructions.

Direct sell with sponsored hubs.

Seasonal hubs containing curated articles bring audience back time after time.

Pain-Free Migrations

Migrations Are Scary; Organic Has Drupal Users Covered

Moving from Drupal 7 to Drupal 9/10 is not as simple as a basic upgrade. Migrating to either of these latest versions requires a deep understanding of specialized migration modules and takes more investment, time, and resources. You may even need to rebuild some of the modules and components you use in Drupal 7 from scratch depending on their compatibility with the version you’re migrating to, and many off-the-shelf modules you may rely on aren’t ready for the upgrade either.

Now is an opportune time to evaluate your technology strategy and consider how much you’d like to put into your next major CMS update.

Organic partners with leading engineering and development agencies to execute migrations — all of which are deeply familiar with Drupal-to-Wordpress transitions. Our partnerships have enabled Organic to offer affordable, pay-as-you-go options for those who want to remove the barrier of upfront migration costs.

During site migrations, Organic works tirelessly to improve publishers’ data schemas, taxonomies, sitemaps, E-E-A-T, and site performance. This detailed effort, combined with the underlying technology, results in material post-migration improvements to traffic and earnings for our publishers.

“As 10up has learned through its decade-plus working alongside enterprise content publishers, the majority of publishers with custom-built platforms — even when built atop a framework like WordPress – invest the majority of their time and effort in building nearly identical functionality. There is value in outsourcing the distraction of product managing the entirety of a content focused CMS [...] Organic is well-aligned to this approach."

Phil Crumm

Senior Vice President, Marketing & Growth, 10up

“Organic’s user-friendly developer infrastructure helped us implement a complete site-design overhaul in under 30 days; we immediately saw our time on site increase by more than 25 percent. Now, we rely on Organic’s integrated analytics—across SEO, content management, programmatic ads, direct-sold campaigns, and affiliate revenue—to ensure we’re making the smart and data-driven decisions that allow our business to thrive, while providing our readers with the premium culinary content they’ve come to expect from our brand. "

Kat Craddock

Editor-in-Chief & CEO, SAVEUR

Saveur = Monthly Pageviews +25%

Saveur goes Organic and improves all audience metrics

Background: Saveur, started in 1994, is a gourmet food, wine, and travel publication for authentic culinary enthusiasts. When CEO and Editor-in-Chief Kat Craddock bought Saveur back from the previous private equity ownership group in 2023, she chose Organic as her technology partner for content, ads, affiliate, and more.

saveur_logo-black

Drupal 7 End of Life: What’s Next?

Accelerated Drupal Releases, Higher Maintenance Costs

Reduced Drupal 7 Security & Support

Organic: A Publisher-Enhanced CMS Experience

Writers, Editors Prefer Organic

Rob Verger

Top-Notch Developer Support

In other's words

Greg Allen

Beautiful User Experiences

Migrations Are Scary; Organic Has Drupal Users Covered

10up Recommends Organic for Publishers

Phil Crumm

Case Study

Kat Craddock

Saveur goes Organic and improves all audience metrics

Organic exceeds all Saveur KPI goals

Customer Success Has Your Back

Organic = SaaS for Publishers

Time to Go Organic?