Drupal CMS auto-updates: How to prepare? How to enable?

Working with Drupal requires certain experience, knowledge, and skills. Even if you successfully create a project on Drupal, in the near future, you will need to install updates and upgrade the site. To avoid doing this manually, use a convenient new solution.
Drupal Auto-Updates in 2025 is a new option for auto-website updates. Thus, you can forget about constant control of each patch or fix. The system will independently and automatically work through everything if necessary.
Today you will learn all the necessary details about Drupal auto-updates and how this will affect web development and website owners in the future.

What Are Drupal Auto-Updates in 2025?

Regular updating of the Drupal site is a direct necessity. But doing it manually is objectively difficult, labor-intensive, and sometimes very expensive. If you do not carry out timely updates, this can negatively affect the site’s security and level of protection against existing threats. As a result, all data, including confidential information of your users, can be compromised. This will immediately reduce user trust, lead to an outflow of visitors, and a general decrease in income from the web project. To prevent this, Drupal offers a modern and effective solution — Drupal auto-updates.
The main goal of the new module is to increase the level of security and improve protection systems with the help of automatic installations of current updates for Drupal. At the same time, this will reduce the overall costs of maintaining the site and simplify interaction with all the main functions and capabilities of the CMS.
There are several key factors why the new Drupal module will become an effective and useful tool for web developers and online business owners.

1. Increased security. The level of Drupal site security will be significantly higher, since intruders will have much less time and opportunities to penetrate the system and cause damage. As a result, you get an increased level of protection and decrease in the frequency of attacks.
2. Saving time. Manual updating requires a lot of resources, including the time and effort of developers and administrators. But automated updating allows you to significantly solve this problem. This will allow you to focus your attention and efforts on more important tasks.
3. Simplified task solving. Another undeniable advantage of automated updates for Drupal is the ability to remove the barrier between the site owner and the technical skills he lacks.

Also, new solutions and updates allow you to increase your ratings among customers, attract a new audience due to constant modernization and improvements in security indicators.

Latest Update: Drupal CMS Release Candidate

First, we need to understand what the Drupal CMS Release Candidate is and what opportunities it opens up for website owners and web developers. This will provide answers to anyone who is just starting to work with the new CMS or planning to implement a new solution. It has several key features at once.

1. Smart Configurations. You get access to pre-packaged configurations. Thanks to this, you can get started quickly rather than creating web projects from scratch.
2. Recipes. If you use standard cases, then ready-made solutions will be great helpers. This way you will save time, effort and other resources.
3. Auto Updates. Uninterrupted updates are your opportunity to always stay safe with minimal effort.
4. Improved interface. The user interface has been developed taking into account the wishes of developers, site owners, and marketers. Now it is much easier to manage web projects.

The presentation of the current version of the CMS took place on January 15, 2025. The Drupal team officially presented the first stable release. Web developers and site owners already have an excellent opportunity to download the update through the official CMS website. This will allow you to integrate new tools and start working with effective solutions for automatic updates.
With the new CMS, you will now:

• automatically receive updates of major fixes, and security releases;
• check the readiness of the site's readiness for launch and updates;
• sign the code and check for current updates;
• integrate the composer;
• use a custom loader.

Further enhancements include new updated features like automatic major or minor releases and the feature that can keep contributed projects updated. In a nutshell, that makes working with Drupal even easier, thought-provoking, and more convenient.
There is still a lot of work ahead to improve CMS. Drupal is also calling its community to help out with the next module improvements and offering incentives for discovering problems and finding solutions. 

How to Prepare Your Website for Auto-Updates

Before turning on all the features and advantages of the Drupal Release Candidate, do proper preparation for automatic updates. That said, here are a few basic steps we recommend.

1. Backup. Though the update is designed to be useful and efficient, sometimes it can go unpredictably. In such a case, backups will be invaluable in letting you revert the site to a working version and avoid any complications.
2. Compatibility checks. Before auto-updates proceed, you need to check to ensure that the various modules installed on your site are not incompatible with each other. Otherwise, it can cause instability and affect your web project's performance.
3. Staging environments. The solution can be helpful for those preparing for just about anything. Test in a staging environment and ensure that afterwards, you can update the main site without worry.
4. Composer. This is an effective and powerful tool for managing dependencies. That is why we suggest that you install it on your local machine before issuing the commands you'd like to.

If given the right preparation, this can give you the desired results for harnessing the full capability of automatic updates.

Potential Issues and How to Avoid Them

Among different problems, it is noteworthy to mention possible incompatibility of installed modules, disruption of the site's functionality, no monitoring during bulk updates, and others.
With due diligence and a little bit of care, all potential threats and errors can be managed. To do this, follow specific proper algorithms and rules for preparing for updates, employ modern modules, and abide by the instructions and recommendations provided by Drupal developers. The fact should always be understood that there is no 100% protection from threats. However, with proper preparedness and tackling the issue holistically, the chances of the web project getting affected are dismally low. Besides, regular updates and new security solutions help avert any other potential errors and threats. 

Final Thoughts

Site owners and developers have highly appreciated the new features of Drupal CMS and actively use the automatic update functions. This is a very efficient and convenient solution that will help get rid of many problems and hiccups. Now, it will be much easier to use Drupal CMS. Many tasks that previously would have required human attention with a great deal of resources will now be performed automatically. The most important thing will be proper preparation for and adherence to the basic arrangements for the use of a new automatic update system.
The Drupal team continues to work on improving and expanding the capabilities of the CMS. Hence it's a priority for developers, like site owners, to expect numerous updates, improvements and additions in the offing ahead. This will enable adaptation of a new CMS to the needs of end-users for the best possible conditions to create and develop sites. 
Be sure to check out Drupal`s advanced features and functions, take advantage of the automatic updates, and do not forget to observe the basic security and safety rules during creation and development of your web project. Need help with Drupal? Contact your Golems team!