ACEIZE Tracking the current state of Science and Technology

I was able to update Aceize to Drupal version 6.10 from version 4.7. As I mentioned in my original post, this was not a minor undertaking. There were dozens of active contributed modules in my Drupal 4.7 site. Not all of them made it through the transition. But most of them fared well.

Here are my tips and highlights for converters to be.

DO's

• Go through both version upgrades. Version 6.10 includes all the updates that you will need, so theoretically you could skip version 5. But, your contributed modules may not have the same level of support. If the contributed modules fail to convert, you want the smallest number of possible changes.
• Read the Drupal Handbook!
  Here's the link
  It is a well written document without a lot of fluff. Make sure you follow the same procedure for both version upgrades. I tried to take some shortcuts, especially while I was upgrading from drupal 5.x to version 6.x. The whole process crashed and I had to start again.

  Below are a few of the items from the handbook that I skipped over and consequently tripped over.

  • Disable your active modules before you update the code.
  • Completely erase your old code before you copy the new drupal code.
  • Check your memory settings.

  There is a good video, too. The Link. Despite what you may see in other videos, you need to follow all the steps in this video when going through both upgrades.

• Make sure you have allocated enough memory
  My php settings were set to 8M, which has been plenty for actually running the site. But enabling many modules at one time requires more than normal amounts of memory.
• Take your time
  I setup a test site and pre-downloaded all the modules I needed. Even after all that setup time, it still took me a little over 4 hours to update the live site. The main reason had to do with memory consumption and database pre-requisites. You simply cannot enable all the modules at one time and not see tons of errors. So I enabled only a couple (1-5 modules) at a time and ran the updates.
• Prepare for acceptable losses.
  In the process of change, sometimes things are lost. Make sure that you know what data is critical to your site and take care of that data. You may even have to port data between a defunct module and a new module. But don't waste your time trying to keep small, easy to 'redo' changes. This process takes long enough.
• Download are your modules before you start
  This process can take a while. It would take a while AND be a pain in the ass if you were trying to download two separate versions for each module file.

DON'T

• Freak Out.
  My upgrade process threw a lot of errors. Especially the cck modules. CCK throws errors when you do not have modules from your old installation re-installed yet. But, you can't have them installed without first installing the base cck, so these errors are unavoidable. Don't worry!
• Wait too much longer.
  The folks at drupal are talking about releasing version 7. When this happens, version 5 will no longer be supported and you will not have a path from 4 to 7.

Miscellaneous Notes

• The forum module throws a strange error.
  This seems to be unique to the 4.7 hacks. Here's the 'solution'. Basically, after the failure, enable the module, re-run the update, then disable the module. I have never had a forum on the site, so... not sure why the error.
• Location CCK error
  When I updated the Location module, I got a HUGE string of sql failure messages, the scariest was '# Failed: ALTER TABLE {location} DROP PRIMARY KEY'. Why are your dropping Primary Keys, drupal? Apparently, this error is not a problem According the developers.
• Big Changes to the adsense module
  I had a hard time trying to figure out how to get the option to include the adsense blocks. The blocks simply WEREN'T AVAILABLE. Then I read this nifty little piece. I simply installed ALL the available adsense modules and everything worked.
• Changes to Custom Regions
  I can't even remember how I set up custom regions on 4.7. But I must have because I had adsense ads at the top of the content section. Well, to save yourself some time - here's how to replace your precious custom regions in 6.x