[infrastructure] Re: [development] Drupal 4.5 unsupported

[Bèr Kessels]

Op dinsdag 30 mei 2006 07:26, schreef blogdiva at culturekitchen.com:
> Which is why upgrading is costly. When you've tweaked things in 20,  
> 30, 50 heres and theres, writing over them for the next decimal  
> upgrade becomes prohibitive. It's time and money gone completely out  
> of the window.

Well, I, developing full time with Drupal for a few years already, wanted to 
upgrade my blog (as the first of twelve+ sites). Its a blog. stories, images, 
taxonomy and comments. a very simple site. Should be a 5 minute job, I 
thought. I was like: « If I dont upgrade ill be stuck here forever» Which is 
what Lambert points out too. And that was the only valid reason for upgrading 
I could think of.

However "something" horribly broke. during the upgrade all content was lost (I 
have backups), and I really did not feel like searching for the problem 
longer then 30 minutes. I don't even feel like getting/asking support, 
because the One solution is very simple, and costs ZERO time: stay where I 
am. It works perfectly fine, has done so for nearly one and a half year. I 
can upgrade. Offcourse I can. Maybe I should. But «Why fix and break 
something that aint broken?»  Only because that allows me the latest 
nittygritty? 

When this happens, even when I expect the upgrade to cost 
time/money/frustration, I feel like «never mind». When upgrading costs me 
such a lot of hassle, staying where I am IS the best solution. And A hassle 
it is. Always. Themes break, customised modules break, modules are not 
available, you name it. 

We should not pretend that upgrading is Very Easy. Academically seen it may 
be. But in practice there is always more to it then you expect (Murphy, 
people, Murphy!) and because it is Drupal -infinite flexibility- people 
hardly ever run vanilla sites. And when my practical example above shows that 
even a vanilla Drupal is not safe from Murphy, how will a highly modified (as 
in with loads of modules) site react on an upgrade? So for a lot of people 
staying put is the cheapest, hassle-free, stressless, and therefore BEST 
solution. 

I have found that most of the (very un-tech-savvy) clients of mine prefer NOT 
to upgrade, but rather include an upgrade in a general overhaul of the site. 
If they dont need that overhaul, they dont need upgrading. 

Bèr