The Cherry Hill Company is excited to announce that we have released a new Drupal 8 version of LibrarySite with a brand new theme. We are now in the process of launching this theme, which we’ve been working on this for several months and we invite you to take a look.</
Our old LibrarySite theme was built in Drupal 7 and served us and many libraries very well. With the news of the end-of-life for Drupal 7 at the end of 2021, and the release of Drupal 9 in 2020, we have begun the work of notifying our clients and scheduling their migration to the new D8 LibrarySite theme. The jump from D7 to D8 is significant but we anticipate that the upgrade from D8 to D9 will not be as significant. We recommend that all of our clients with a D7 LibrarySite upgrade to D8 first because it will be an easier transition to then upgrade from D8 to D9 in 2021.
So what exactly does “end-of-life” mean? It means that D7 and D8 will no longer be supported. With no support, there will no longer be any bug fixes, new projects or modules, no core commits, or new documentation in D7 or D8. It is best to start planning now for the migration. We would like our clients to start planning on migrating in the next year to our new D8 LibrarySite template, keeping in mind that the migration to D9 will follow in 2021. It may seem like that is a long time away, but it will creep up on us sooner than you think and we want to make sure our clients are prepared. Better to be prepared and have plenty of time for this than to have a rush to complete it.
The new D8 theme has been updated with a new modern look and feel. We’ve also added a few features that are optional, and kept the existing functionality and the features our clients found most useful. Like our D7 LibrarySite template, it is a responsive site and designed with accessibility in mind.
See above for the new LibrarySite Design homepage. Clients will be able to pick their fonts, colors and choose other customizations to make it their own. The new theme has a hidden search area which will expand when you click on SEARCH. This will save precious real estate up in the header area.
Here is what a basic page will look like:
One of our optional features many of you have requested is the mega menu.
If you have any questions regarding scheduling your site for the D8 migration or any questions about D7/D8/D9, please contact the Cherry Hill Company and we will answer them.