Content: Blog

Technical Risks of Staying on 3.11

If your website is still running django CMS 3.11, now is the moment to plan your migration.

Support for django CMS 3.11 is coming to an end, and continuing to rely on it introduces security risks, compatibility issues, and rising maintenance costs. Migrating sooner rather than later gives your team more control, fewer surprises, and access to modern features that make development faster and safer.

This article explains why upgrading now is the smart move, what risks you avoid by acting early, and how to approach the migration with confidence.

End of Support Means Increased Risk

Once django CMS 3.11 reaches end of support, it will no longer receive security patches, bug fixes, or compatibility updates for newer Django or Python releases. That means any newly discovered vulnerabilities will remain unpatched. Over time, this creates real operational risk — especially for public-facing or compliance-sensitive websites.

Even if your site “still works,” you’ll be running on unsupported software, which can become a blocker for audits, client requirements, or internal security policies.

Compatibility Problems Will Only Get Worse

django CMS 3.11 is tied to older versions of Django and Python. As the ecosystem moves forward, third-party packages will drop support for older Django versions, Python upgrades become harder or impossible, and deployment tooling and hosting platforms increasingly assume modern stacks.

The longer you wait, the more technical debt accumulates — and the more painful the eventual migration becomes.

The Biggest Lesson: The CMS Isn’t the Problem — Legacy Data Is

One of the most important takeaways from real migrations:

Most migration issues are not caused by django CMS 4 itself.
They are caused by years of accumulated custom code and inconsistent CMS data.

Common pain points uncovered during migration:

• Orphaned plugins

• Corrupted page trees

• Custom code relying on specific django CMS 3 design choices

• CMS 3–specific template assumptions

These problems already exist in many CMS 3 projects — the CMS 4 migration simply exposes them. Once cleaned up, the migration becomes dramatically smoother.

Benefits of Migrating to django CMS 4.x

django CMS 4 introduces meaningful internal changes:

• Pages and page content (formerly roughly a "title" object) are now clearly separated
• Versioning now is optional — it’s no longer core
• Edit and previews are handled differently by admin endpoints
• Language handling is more intentional and explicit

Trying to replicate CMS 3 behaviour exactly will cause friction. Embracing the new model reduces it. Once teams adjusted expectations, CMS 4 proved to be stable, predictable, and powerful.

Do Not Stop at 4.x go to django CMS 5

Here’s the best part:

Once you are on django CMS 4, upgrading to CMS 5 is usually trivial.

In most cases, django CMS 5 migration involves:

• Updating packages to their latest versions

• Running migrations

• Removing temporary workarounds used for CMS 4 compatibility

No large conceptual jump. No migration tooling. No data model shock.

django CMS 4 is the hard step. django CMS 5 is the reward.

Migration Checklist: django CMS 3.11 → 4 (→ 5)

1. Preparation (Do Not Skip This)

• Back up your database

• Clone production data to a local or staging environment

• Upgrade Django first (e.g. to Django 4.2)

• Move from djangocms-text-ckeditor to djangocms-text (if you have not done yet). Configure djangocms-text to use the CKEditor4 if you want to avoid user-facing changes.

• Ensure your project runs cleanly before touching CMS

2. Clean Your CMS Data Before Migrating

This step prevents duplicated pages and broken trees.

• Run CMS integrity checks using python -m manage cms check

• Fix the CMS page tree using python -m manage cms fix-tree

• Remove orphaned plugins using python -m manage cms delete_orphaned_plugins

• Verify admin and page rendering still works

• Revert to this clean DB state before migrating

3. Install Required CMS 4 Packages

• Read the how-tos: djangocms-4-migration and these blog posts

  • django CMS 4 is just around the corner – what happens to my existing django CMS 3 projects?

  • How I Successfully Upgraded a Legacy Django CMS Project to 4.1.4

• Install django CMS 4 (preferably 4.1.9 or later) using pip install django-cms~=4.1

• Install djangocms-4-migration helper using pip install git+https://github.com/django-cms/djangocms-4-migration

• Install required companion packages:

  • djngocms-versioning 2.1 (pip install djangocms-versioning~=2.1)

  • djangocms-alias 2.0 (pip install djangocms-alias~=2.0)

• Move to djangocms-stories if you have been using djangocms-blog with django CMS 3.11

• Add them to INSTALLED_APPS in the correct order 

4. Run Migrations

• Run Django migrations

• Verify CMS tables migrate correctly

• Confirm pages still exist in the database

• Remove "djangocms_4_migration" from INSTALLED_APPS

Schema changes are expected — this is normal.

5. Update Custom Code and Templates

Expect to update:

• Direct title object access

• Models that use the placeholder field

• Old admin URL reversals

• page or title extensions

• CMS 3–specific template tags

• Custom language preview implementations

Most fixes are straightforward once identified.

6. Validate Versions Carefully

Use known compatible versions:

• django CMS 4.1.9+

• Compatible versioning package

• Django 4.2+

Avoid mixing early CMS 4 releases with the newest plugins unless verified.

7. Verify Page Rendering Thoroughly

• Test homepage and simple pages

• Test deeply nested pages

• Test pages with heavy plugin usage

• Verify CMS admin tree behaviour

8. Continue to django CMS 5

Some CMS 4 plugin features (e.g. certain alias behaviours) were fixed in CMS 5. Also, it's a lot faster, again.

The Bottom Line

• django CMS 3.11 support ends in April — waiting increases risk

• CMS 4 migration work mostly involves clean-up and modernization

• Once on CMS 4, CMS 5 is a small step

• The CMS ecosystem is healthier, clearer, and more maintainable going forward

If your site has been running for years, migration isn’t just about compatibility — it’s about finally paying down long-standing technical debt.

The best time to migrate was earlier. The second-best time is now. 

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