[consulting] Upgrading to 5.0

[Boris Mann]

On 1/7/07, Michael Haggerty <mhaggerty at trellon.com> wrote:
> I maintain a large number of Drupal sites for clients and many of them would
> like to move to to 5.0 after it is released. I am working on strategies here
> for how to handle mass migrations - anyone else doing the same?
>
> For my part, I have done the following to get ready for upgrades:
>
> - put together an application log that covers the basics of each site:
> - identified which modules are installed
> - identified which themes are installed
> - identified which custom modules are installed that need to be upgraded
> - identifies and the version of Drupal from which we are migrating
> - set up a development environment to test each upgrade prior to putting it
> into production
>
> My plan is to wait at least 60 days after the stable release to see what
> kinds of issues arise from the upgrade.
>
> Would appreciate any thoughts or comments.

Depending on the site, you might consider doing A-B upgrading. So, do
a complete clone of the system, perform the upgrade, and then switch
DNS when everything is working correctly. There are a ton of caveats
to this...we're working with a lot of virtual environments, so we CAN
clone them in this way. Also consider upgrading stack components
(MySQL, PHP, Apache) at the same time.

Also: you can customize the install/upgrade hooks of modules if you
have specific upgrade paths that need following. Drupal has the built
in hooks for this.

You may need some extra scripts (e.g. moving files around or making DB
changes) -- if you come up with any, please add to the issue queue for
the appropriate module.

HTH,

-- 
Boris Mann
Vancouver 778-896-2747
San Francisco 415-367-3595
Skype borismann
http://www.bryght.com