For the 4.7 upgrade, i'd encourage you to view the videocast at:
http://drupal.org/videocasts/upgrading-to-4.7
It answers many of your questions.
The basic answer for flexinode, is that if you install the flexinode module on your 4.7 installation and then run update.php your content should be intact.
Regarding question 4, that's a really tricky thing to do. I wouldn't advise advertising this to clients, and this is NOT archival quality, but if you were REALLY careful you could create a database backup, save it into the site files directory and then tar or zip the whole thing up for transport to another drupal site. The following things would have to be true in order for the import to work: 1. The version of drupal being imported to MUST be the same version. 2. The destination version of drupal MUST be on the same database technology. 3. All of the modules that your using must be downloaded on the drupal version.
Otherwise you should consider satic copies of the site using a tool like wget to build an archive copy of the static version of the drupal site.
Hope that helps.
Dave
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From: support-bounces@drupal.org [mailto:support-bounces@drupal.org] On Behalf Of Bruce Whealton Sent: Thursday, August 10, 2006 12:03 PM To: support@drupal.org Subject: [support] Backing up, upgrading, moving drupal install
Hi all, I've been away for a bit from the list and now I'm noticing that 4.7.x is the latest version. Ok, I have some sites that use 4.6.x. I'm wanted to figure out what steps would need to be made to keep the content of a site and upgrade the install. Here are some obvious concerns. 1) The modules are specific to a particular version, so whatever content used a module with 4.6.x will cause problems. For example, I use a flexinode content type. How can I keep content that uses the flexinodes for 4.6.x when I upgrade to 4.7.x? 2) and other content that uses a module for 4.6.x what will happen to it when I upgrade to 4.7.x? say I had a movie review module. what would happen when I upgrade and no longer have that module available? 3) what do I need to backup and how should it best be done to make these upgrades?
4) If I wanted to give a client all the content and the install of a site, on a CD, what steps would I take? what would I need to backup and how? The goal would be to give the client on CD everything they would need to keep the content and if needed install it elsewhere? 4a) What steps would be taken to one, backup everything and two setup the site again from the backup contents?
5) I want to do this with a writer's community site and poetry magazine online. Where might I seek persons to share admin tasks for this community, from among persons that know Drupal? Maybe a newsgroup, for writers, or one for CMS users, might exist where one could request others to join with me on such a website/CMS installation. Thanks so much in advance, Bruce
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Bruce Whealton, publisher/co-editor/webmaster for -> Word Salad Poetry Magazine - join us online at: http://wordsalad.net/ and also -> Bruce Whealton - Webmaster/Designer/publisher/Writer http://trianglewebservices.com/ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++