Drupal 7 will reach End of Life on 5 January 2025. As part of the Transforming Oxford's Digital Communications programme, action has been taken to ensure continued support for the University's existing central web platforms during the period of rollout of Oxford Fresco, the new web platform. This has been done by contracting with an external supplier to provide extended life support for Drupal 7 until October 2026. This will cover both Oxford Mosaic and Oxweb websites.
What does this mean for Mosaic websites?
The Mosaic web platform is built on Drupal 7, the well-established Open Source CMS product supported by the Drupal.org community. Throughout its life, Mosaic has relied on the support provided by the Drupal community for functional fixes and security support of its underlying software. To date, this has worked as follows:
| Software supported |
Code supplied by |
Code implemented by |
| Drupal 7 Core |
Drupal Community |
CMS and Web Platform Team |
| Drupal 7 Contributed Modules |
Drupal Community |
CMS and Web Platform Team |
| Mosaic Customised Modules and Integrations |
CMS and Web Platform Team |
CMS and Web Platform Team |
As a very mature product, Drupal 7 has not had significant functionality changes for several years, but security support for the Drupal 7 products is continuing to be supplied by the Drupal Community up until the End of Life date.
After that point, from 5 January 2025, ongoing security support for Oxford Mosaic will be supplied in tandem with our external supplier, Hero Devs, as follows:
| Software supported |
Code supplied by |
Code implemented by |
| Drupal 7 Core* |
Hero Devs Never-Ending Support (NES) |
CMS and Web Platform Team |
| Drupal 7 Contributed Modules* |
Hero Devs Never-Ending Support (NES) |
CMS and Web Platform Team |
| Mosaic Customised Modules and Integrations |
CMS and Web Platform Team |
CMS and Web Platform Team |
*Hero Devs will work to the same SLA as was previously provided by Drupal.org.
In order to meet the requirements to make use of Drupal 7 NES from January 2025, and to continue to operate the platform on the Acquia Enterprise Cloud, Mosaic has been upgraded to the latest versions of:
- Drupal 7
- PHP
- SimpleSAML (for SSO integration)
A Third-Party Security Assessment for Hero Devs has also been completed with assistance from the University’s InfoSec team.
The Mosaic platform hosting partner, Acquia, are supporting use of Hero Devs Drupal 7 NES. Throughout 2025 and 2026, our engagement with Acquia’s Technical Account Management service will also continue, to ensure that the hosting arrangements for the Platform remain appropriate. This will include, for example, upgrading the database layer to ensure continued compatibility with both Acquia Cloud and Drupal 7 NES.
The outcome of this will mean that the Mosaic Service can continue to provide security-supported hosting of platform websites through to October 2026, while the New CMS Platform and Migration projects carry out the transition to Drupal 10 on Oxford Fresco. A similar arrangement will provide the same transition cover for Oxweb.
