Drupal 6 Site: Upgrade to Pressflow

Nisha Oommen | Updated 09 Sep 2021 | 2 min read

Drupal 8 was released on Nov 19th, 2015. Though Drupal 6 end of life was declared on February 24th, 2016, there are still over 84,845 Drupal 6 websites on the web.

What does end of Life Mean for Drupal 6?

As per Drupal 6 end of life, the security team will no longer provide support or security advisories for Drupal 6 and the core of Drupal 6 will no longer receive community support.

For those users that still have an installation of Drupal 6 and are unable to upgrade to Drupal 7 or Drupal 8, a D6LTS (Drupal 6 Long Term Support) has been created to provide long-term support for Drupal 6. By updating Drupal 6 to Pressflow, you get the solution provided by the D6LTS in which Drupal 6 site can be made secure at very low cost.

There can be two major issues that hold back these Drupal 6 sites from upgrading to Drupal 7 or Drupal 8. If the site is complex, it can be that they are waiting for a stable version of Drupal 8 before migrating to it. Or they do not want to migrate to Drupal 7 when the next version is already available (Drupal 8). The second major issue can be the budget needed to migrate.

What is Pressflow?

Pressflow is a fully API compatible distribution of Drupal with integrated performance, scalability, availability and testing enhancements. The Drupal 6 Long Term Support (D6LTS) team will be releasing the security fixes in Pressflow. Upgrading Drupal 6 to Pressflow is not time-consuming, and provides a minimal budget solution to keep the Drupal 6 site secure. Pressflow upgrade is recommended by the D6LTS vendors for Drupal 6 websites.

Benefits of Upgrading a Drupal 6 Site to Pressflow

Pressflow will be updated with the needed security fixes and release patches
Pressflow is open source software
Built in support tools for high-performance websites at par with Drupal 7
Allows database replication
Support for external reverse proxy caching using Varnish
100% API compliant
Optimized for PHP 5 and MySQL 5

Zyxware Technologies, a leading Drupal development company from India, has been at the forefront of Drupal development through all the major version changes in Drupal. We can help map out an upgrade that is to your best interest. We always evaluate the site, take a backup and verify the Drupal patches on the site before we do an upgrade to a site. If you have a Drupal 6 site and would like to know the best options available for you, get in touch with us.