On November 19th Drupal 8 was released!
There will be dancing in the streets!
OK. Maybe some happy wriggling at a few computer desks.
But what does this mean if your site is built with Drupal? It depends. If your site is running Drupal 7, not much. There is little advantage to even thinking about upgrading unless you're unhappy with the way things work now. Even so, while version 8 is released, it may not yet be ready for more complicated sites. So you should take a close look at what you want your site to do, and if version 8 has all the necessary modules needed. Many of those will be rolled out over the next 6 months. So you might need to wait a bit longer to use Drupal 8. But as with all major releases, the improvements and new features will be well worth the wait.
Drupal 6? Time to Be Concerned
However, if your site is still running Drupal 6, then your time is running out if you're concerned with security and bug fixes. The Drupal community has said they will provide support for Drupal 6 for 3 months beyond the Drupal 8 release. I have seen some sites that haven't had the software updated for months, even years. They are lucky if they haven't had security holes exploited. But why gamble? Doing the updates is easier if you do them regularly or you pay your developer a little bit of money to do it for you. We had a client (fortunately running on another server) who declined to have us do updates as they were released. One day his site was hacked and it was a mess to fix, costing much time, money and aggravation. He gambled...and lost.
The good news is that making updates is even easier with Drupal 7. Modules can be updated right in the browser. Drupal core still can't be done that way, but a hosting system that has the command line tool Drush installed makes that a snap. We've even developed a script that automates even more of the necessary steps for safe upgrades.
So, don't gamble with your site, your business, your life. Get your software updated and keep it that way. Let us know if we can help!