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When Umbraco 8 reaches its end of life (EOL) in February next year it will formally mark the end of any form of support for that major version of Umbraco CMS. This means Umbraco will not release any further security patches or updates which can potentially leave any websites still using Umbraco 8 vulnerable to security risks and could impact on your organisation's compliance issues. It is also worth noting that as there will be no future updates then changes to things like browsers or device operating system versions could cause instability issues with websites still using Umbraco 8 going forward.
The good news is there are several later versions of Umbraco that it is possible to migrate your website to. At the time of writing Umbraco 14 is the latest version of Umbraco CMS. However, as this is a standard term support (STS) version then it may be worth considering Umbraco 13 which is a long term support (LTS) version of the CMS which will not reach end of life until December 2026. By choosing to upgrade to one of the later versions of Umbraco you ensure that you are on a fully supported version and also get to take advantage of the latest features and updates.
The bad news is it is not currently possible to directly upgrade from Umbraco 8 to one of the later versions due to the changes to the underlying framework. This also means that any custom code, components, features and plugins being used will need to be carefully reviewed as they may need rewriting and/or replacing as part of moving to a newer version of Umbraco. It is possible to reuse the database of your Umbraco 8 website although there are a number of steps that must be followed to ensure it is compatible with the later versions.
We would strongly advise anyone still using Umbraco 8 to consider upgrading to a later version as soon as possible given the process of doing so is not straight forward.
Umbraco's recommended approach for upgrading is to ensure your website is on the very latest version of Umbraco 8 (v8.18.14) and then look to use a copy of your database in your new project, upgrading through the relevant versions to ensure any necessary migrations take place. Using this option allows you to preserve all of your content pages and media items. However, you will still need to rewrite any custom code that is not compatible in the later versions as well as handle any issues caused by incompatible plugins or packages.
The alternative approach is to start fresh! By creating a brand new version of the website on Umbraco 13/14 you avoid any potential compatibility issues, it also allows you to reassess the overall design and architecture of the website to take advantage of the newer features. The drawback to this approach is it requires recreating all content pages and media items. However, there are techniques to migrate some of these over which can help ease the burden for larger websites.
We have successfully upgraded many Umbraco 8 websites of various sizes to newer versions of Umbraco using both of these approaches. If you are interested in upgrading to a later version of Umbraco or just require some assistance in figuring out your next steps then feel free to get in touch today to see how we can help.