New in Craft CMS 2.7
Craft 3 has been available since April, but not every project calls for an immediate migration. Craft 2.7 fills that gap, bringing PHP 7.2 support and keeping existing projects on a solid footing.
The Road to PHP 7.2
Craft 2 is built on the Yii 1 framework, which long depended on the mcrypt extension. This extension was deprecated in PHP 7.1 and eliminated in PHP 7.2. While Yii 1 retained that dependency, Craft 2 could not support PHP 7.2. In early July, Yii 1.1.20 made the framework compatible with PHP 7.2 for the first time. Craft 2.7 followed soon after, bundling the mcrypt_compat library for servers missing mcrypt. As a result, the update works on existing hosting setups without manual steps.
Craft 2 Still Makes Sense, for Now
For new projects, Craft 3 is the right choice. Built on Yii 2, it comes with a plugin store and native multi-site support baked in. Starting a new project on Craft 2 and migrating later adds unnecessary overhead, especially as more plugins drop support for Craft 2 in favor of Craft 3.
Existing projects are a different matter. Moving from Craft 2 to Craft 3 takes more than running an update. Templates need to be reworked, and plugin compatibility has to be checked carefully. Where a plugin hasn't been ported or has been abandoned, that alone can reshape the entire migration plan.
To its credit, Pixel & Tonic isn't leaving anyone in the lurch. Craft 2 is still actively supported through March 2019, and even after that, security patches keep coming until March 2020. Still, a migration that starts late rarely goes smoothly.
Conclusion
For anyone still on Craft 2, the update is a no-brainer. The more interesting question is what comes next, and the Craft Plugin Store is probably the best place to start figuring that out.
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