Somebody left, reorganized, or retired, and now there’s a Drupal site with your name next to it. Maybe you’re technical, maybe you’re just the person who said “I can figure it out.” Either way — welcome. Here’s the trail map.

Which Drupal am I even running?

Fastest tells, no login required: view the page source and look for /sites/all/ in file paths — that pattern usually means Drupal 7. Paths under /core/ mean Drupal 8 or newer. With an admin login, the exact version is on the status report at /admin/reports/status — that page is about to become your best friend.

Why it matters: Drupal 7, 8, and 9 are all past end of life. No security releases, from anyone, ever again. Drupal 10 is supported but has its own end-of-life on the calendar (December 2026), and Drupal 11 is current. Where you are on that ladder decides how urgent your year is.

The five checks to run first

The status report (/admin/reports/status). Red items are your to-do list. Note the Drupal version and PHP version.
Pending updates (/admin/reports/updates). A wall of red security releases means the site has been coasting — common, fixable, urgent-ish.
The user list (/admin/people). Every administrator account should be a person you can name. Disable the ones nobody recognizes, especially any generic “admin” or agency accounts from vendors long gone.
Backups. Find one. Restore it somewhere safe. Until you’ve done that, you don’t have backups — you have hope.
The codebase. Is there a git repository? Composer files? If the answer is “the code only exists on the server,” write that down in red — it shapes everything a future upgrade costs.

What’s dangerous to click

Don’t run database updates, don’t uninstall modules “to clean up,” and don’t update PHP on a Drupal 7 site to see what happens — old Drupal and new PHP disagree in ways that take a site down instantly. Look freely; change carefully.

When to stop guessing

If the site is D7/8/9, if the backups check failed, or if the codebase has no repository — the honest move is an assessment before any real work: module-by-module findings, honest risk calls, and a costed path to Drupal 11, from $2,500 flat with the fee crediting toward the work. One monolithic Drupal 7 site with millions of nodes has already made that trip through this shop with every record intact — inherited sites are most of what we see, and yours won’t be the roughest.

Dead North maintains two contrib modules on drupal.org and runs Drupal upgrade assessments and rescues from Minneapolis. Prices on the page, honest advice first.