I don't think that this has been stated, so:
The key to making this as pain-free as possible is to create a separate site for your upgrade, then once everything is running swimmingly, you can cut over. At the time you cut over, you can load the latest data from your 4.7 DB and run update.php in 5.3. In other words: never upgrade a production site.
6 is imminent, however, if your site depends on contributed modules, there is no telling when, if ever, those will be released. I think that some of the sites we manage didn't switch to 5.x for four to six months. That said, the switch to 6, while not trivial, might be easier on module maintainers that the one from 4.7.
Likewise, the theming system is changing, but it also simplifies the theming process, so upgrading your themes will be work, but not too bad.
Thanks,
Cary
Cary Gordon The Cherry Hill Company http://www.chillco.com
On Oct 15, 2007, at 1:56 PM, Daniel Carrera wrote:
Hello,
I have a production website that runs on Drupal 4.7. Should I move it to Drupal 5.2?
I'm concerned that migrating might be difficult, might be work, or might cause downtime for my users. On the other hand, I'm concerned about staying with an old software version that might become unsupported in the future, and that migration might be more difficult later.
My Drupal 4.7 site has several modules added on and I figure that these might not all work in Drupal 5. My understanding is that backwards compatibility is not a development goal for Drupal. So perhaps the best way to "migrate" is to essentially re-do the website from scratch and then copy all the content from the 4.7 site.
I'm generally happy with Drupal 4.7. Is there any page that briefly explains what's new and exciting in Drupal 5 that might make one want to move to it?
Any help would be appreciated.
Cheers, Daniel.