Upgrade Drupal 8 to Drupal 11 — Full Three-Hop Tutorial (8 → 9 → 10 → 11)

Drupal 8 is years past end of life, but you can still get it to Drupal 11 — in place, one major at a time. From Drupal 8 that is THREE hops: 8 → 9, 9 → 10, 10 → 11. The same database is carried through all three. In this video we take a real Drupal 8.9 site (a custom theme and a custom module) through every hop. What you will learn: • Why Drupal 8 → 11 is three in-place hops and how Upgrade Status re-targets each one • Hop 8 → 9: code only — remove drupal_set_message() and widen core_version_requirement (drupal-rector automates this) • Hop 9 → 10: the removed core modules (ckeditor, color, quickedit, rdf), the bartik/seven themes, and the CKEditor 4 → 5 migration • Hop 10 → 11: raising PHP to 8.3 and the database to MySQL 8, dropping the Tour module • Running composer require + drush updatedb once per hop, and the {router}.alias gotcha Chapters: 00:00 Intro — 8 to 11 is three hops 00:42 A Drupal 8.9 site 01:05 Install Upgrade Status (targets Drupal 9) 01:28 Read the report — hop 1 needs no server changes 01:45 Fix the custom code 02:10 Hop 1: 8 → 9 02:38 Hop 2: 9 → 10 and the removed core modules 03:05 Hop 3 setup: raise PHP and the database 03:28 Hop 3: 10 → 11 03:52 Final updates and verify 04:15 Key takeaways Challenge: get your Drupal 8 site to 8.9.x, then do ONLY the 8 → 9 hop on a copy — widen core_version_requirement, run drupal-rector, bump core to ^9, updatedb. No server changes. That is the whole first hop. Part 3 of a 4-part series — upgrading to Drupal 11 from Drupal 10, 9, 8 and 7. Every command runs through ddev and every screen is the real site. Part 1 (Drupal 10 → 11):    • Upgrade Drupal 10 to Drupal 11 — Full Step...   Part 2 (Drupal 9 → 11):    • Upgrade Drupal 9 to Drupal 11 — Full Two-H...   Part 4 (Drupal 7 → 11):    • Migrate Drupal 7 to Drupal 11 — Full Migra...   #drupal #drupal11 #drupalupgrade #webdevelopment #ddev