Keeping Drupal 8 Up-to-Date

By Amber Matz

Between Drupal 8's regularly scheduled updates and its security releases, it's more important than ever to understand how to keep your Drupal 8 site up-to-date.

Getting your Drupal 8 site up-to-date can depend on a number of factors:

- How the Drupal site was installed in the first place
- What tools were used (i.e. Composer, Drush)
- How out-of-date it was in the first place

In this session, we'll:

- Review the concept of semantic versioning, what Drupal's different kinds of releases mean, and how they are scheduled
- Cover best practices for updating Drupal, including the use of Composer and Drush for this purpose
- Demonstrate how adapt your site-install to use Composer
- Discuss when and how you can use Drush to update your site
- Point you toward resources about Drupal releases, including security patches

Note: This session will *not* cover migrating from a previous major version of Drupal (i.e. Drupal 6 or 7) to Drupal 8.

Learning Objectives & Outcomes:
By the end of this session, you will:
- Be better equipped to update your Drupal 8 site using current best practices and tools, including Composer and Drush
- Understand how to install Drupal with ease-of-updates in mind
- Know how to keep yourself informed about Drupal's maintenance, security, and new feature releases.

https://2018.tcdrupal.org/session/keeping-drupal-8-date

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