Building sites in Drupal 7 with an eye on Drupal 8

We find ourselves inching closer to the release of Drupal 8; this leaves many of us feeling uneasy when deciding whether
to continue with Drupal 7 development. How do we reconcile our need to build now with our desire to be in line with the
latest and greatest? Simply waiting until an unspecified date to innovate is not an option.

The answer is to build and code our Drupal 7 websites with Drupal 8 in mind. The migrate module is in Drupal 8 core with
migrate paths from Drupal 6 and Drupal 7 available; we need to align ourselves with the existing upgrade path before
it's time to use them.

From selecting the right modules and themes, to employing forward-thinking development practices like componentization,
to cleaning up cruft from your current website, there are a number of ways to prepare websites you work on for a
smoother migration to Drupal 8.

In this presentation we will walk through the best decisions we can make when building and coding new Drupal 7 websites,
as well as what to do with existing Drupal 6/7 websites, to best position ourselves for the imminent release of Drupal 8.

The code parts of this presentation are based on the key points of this DevDays session:

http://montpellier2015.drupaldays.org/sessions/developing-components-cross-version-drupal-code

As requested, the slides used in the session have been attached here.