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Upgrading Drupal

Timothy J Bruce

I've built a check list for each time I upgrade Drupal, whether it's a simple (incremental) version upgrade (version 5.4 to 5.7) or a full version upgrade (from version 5 to version 6).

Upgrade

  • Copy the drupal and module files to the web server.
  • Unzip (using tar) the main drupal file.
  • Unzip the modules.
  • Configure the sites directory for each website.
  • Log into the website with the Administrative account (Account #1)
  • Disable all modules (/admin/build/modules)
  • Put database in maintenance mode
  • Backup database to flat file.
  • Update apache configuration to point to new version (commenting out the old lines - by commenting them out, you can easily uncomment them if you have to do a recovery and comment out the newer version).
  • Connect to the website url, adding update.php to the end (to start the update process).
  • Follow on-screen prompts.
  • Enable all modules
  • If you're using WyzWig module, Go back and enable module "Tiny mce" (enabling WyzWig disables it for some reason)
  • If you're using the node_permissions module, Run node_permissions module.
  • Re-run update.php
  • Configure the WyzWig Editor module (this seems to lose it's configuration with some upgrades, for some reason), and any other modules you need.
  • If you've added or upgrade any modules, fix the role permissions (/admin/user/permissions)
  • Take database out of maintenance mode.
  • Verify as an anonymous user (by logging out) that the site looks the way you want and that the functionality works correctly.

Recovery

  • Drop all tables in the database.
  • Reload the backup into the correct database.
  • Update apache to point to the correct directory (uncomment the old lines and comment the new lines).