Updates for Drupal 8.3

Earlier this month another regularly scheduled version of Drupal core was released. The current stable version of core is now 8.3.2. In this blog post we're going to take a look at some of the new features that have been added to this feature release and some of the tutorial updates we've made to make sure we're staying on top of the ever moving drop.

Earlier this year we talked about the experimental module changes coming in 8.3. One of the biggest transitions that happened with this release is that the BigPipe module moved from experimental to stable status. This allows you to speed up the rendering of your site with no additional configuration (aside from enabling the Dynamic Page Cache module).

Other experimental modules have also made progress in the 8.3 release cycle. The Migrate module has progressed to beta status. This means that there are no additional backward compatibility breaking API changes anticipated. That makes it a really good time to start working on migrating your site (if you haven't already). Additionally the Migrate Drupal and Migrate Drupal UI modules, while still in alpha status, saw significant improvements with this release and support was added for migrating the translation of configuration. The upgrade path from Drupal 6 to 8 is nearing beta stability, while the upgrade path from 7 to 8 is still a work in progress. These new changes have only had a minor impact on our tutorials. The major changes that impacted our migration guide was the renaming of the migration process plugin to migration_lookup and the addition of the download process plugin. You can find these changes reflected in our updated Process Plugins tutorial.

The Content Moderation module in this release has undergone perhaps the biggest change. Not necessarily because of the additional features and improvements that have been added, but because of the lack of an upgrade path for previous releases of Drupal 8.3. Because of its status as an experimental module there is no official upgrade path between 8.2 and 8.3. Thankfully an unofficial upgrade path has emerged that might help if you get stuck.

This update serves as an important reminder to pay attention to the status of the new experimental modules added to core. Making use of them before they're fully stable may require you to do some additional work when performing upgrades in the short term. Other alpha status experimental modules that saw improvements in this release include Settings Tray, DateTime range, Place Block, and Inline Form Errors.

Given these kinds of changes that happen on a regular basis in Drupal 8, we're committed to updating our tutorials for every new release to make sure you always get the most up-to-date and accurate information for your projects. Keep an eye out for further updates with newer versions of Drupal 8 and note that Drupal 8.4 is scheduled for release on October 4, 2017.