About beta testing

Who should apply?

Anyone is welcome to apply, but agencies and site owners who maintain ambitious Drupal 8 projects are the most interesting candidates. In particular, websites using a wide range of contributed and custom modules or having large volumes of content are particularly welcome, as these are the most likely to experience regressions.

How to join

Applications are always welcome! The period in which testing is most useful is between the first beta and the first release candidate.

Beta testers should report their results in a timely fashion for the early testing to be beneficial. Organizations and individuals will be considered permanent members of the beta testing team so long as they report their results in a timely fashion, unless they explicitly ask to leave by getting in touch with the Drupal Association.

Apply to participate in the program

Beta testing

Aside from the initial communications, the beta testing process happens entirely in the Drupal core issue queue:

1. When the first beta is released for a given minor release, a beta testing meta issue is created on Drupal.org and shared with the program participants.

2. Special steps for the Drupal 9 major update:

   • Review Upgrading a Drupal 8 site to Drupal 9.
   • Use the Upgrade Status module to check whether your site is Drupal 9-ready.
   • Update all modules and themes to versions compatible with Drupal 9. If no Drupal 9-compatible version is available yet, locate or file an issue in that project's issue queue.

3. Participants are expected to manually test the update in a staging environment mirroring one or more of their production websites.

   • Ideally the update process itself would mirror the update procedure that will be applied to the production environment, to minimize the risk of missing problems that would only arise in the production context.
   • It's also especially useful if the website was originally built on Drupal 6 or 7 and later migrated to Drupal 8.

4. After testing the update process itself, the updated website should be tested to spot any kind of significant regression in key areas (accessibility, appearance, functionality, performance and scalability, SEO, security, usability, etc.).

5. Any regression found should be reported in the Drupal core issue queue, should reference the meta issue as parent, and should be tagged with the 9.0.0 beta testing tag. This does not apply to security issues, which should be reported privately following the standard procedure.

6. If no regression is found, the participant should report the successful update in the meta issue.

7. Participants can repeat their testing after a new beta or RC is published, to verify that issues are resolved and help ensure there are no new regressions.

All reported issues will go through the usual assessment process and, depending on the issue severity, may determine a rollback of the commit(s) that introduced the regression. If an issue cannot be resolved in time for the scheduled release, it will be documented in the release notes.

What's in it for participants?

Many companies and Drupal users are looking to help with core development but are not always sure where to start. Joining this program presents a new way to help the development of software that powers their websites and acquire new knowledge and visibility in return:

• Updating early helps find issues beforehand, rather than after the release is out. This is not only beneficial for beta testers themselves, but also for all the site owners that lack the resources and/or the expertise to recover from a failed update. By participating in the program, people are doing a great service to the whole community.

• Reporting issues encountered lets beta testers tap the wealth of experience of the Drupal core contributors that they would not have the same level of access to, if they updated on their own after the release.

• All organizations and individuals taking part in the testing will receive issue credits for both testing the update, as they will be credited in the meta issue, and for any reported regression.

• While performing regression testing after updating, beta testers will get an advanced preview of the upcoming features in Drupal core.