Upgrading from Drupal 4.66 to Drupal 4.7
Upgrading from Drupal 4.66 to Drupal 4.7 like any upgrade of a data dependent application or web Content Management System warrants careful consideration of the data structure. In Drupal, new versions often come with an upgrade script that runs SQL commands on the old database to adjust the structure to match that of the new versions data structure.
in order to avoid loosing existing data, it is necessary to make a complete, tested working backup of the current setup so that one can always revert to the former version if the upgrade fails. In the case at hand, there are more than 150 nodes in the CMS and the risk of loosing this information must be seriously considered and reduced to nil.
Procedure
A backup of both the codebase and the data structure is made to the local drive
in order to avoid loosing existing data, it is necessary to make a complete, tested working backup of the current setup so that one can always revert to the former version if the upgrade fails. In the case at hand, there are more than 150 nodes in the CMS and the risk of loosing this information must be seriously considered and reduced to nil.
Procedure
A backup of both the codebase and the data structure is made to the local drive
- The codebase if backed-up by simply copying the files to a local folder with the exact directory structure as on the server
- The database is backed up by using a database management application such as PHPmyadmin to generate an SQL (mySQL compatible code for mySQL databases) and saving the file to the local drive
- The codebase upgrade does not require any changes to the 4.66 codebase, you will start off witht he 4.7 codebase and just upgrade the database.
- Database: Create a new and empty database that will be populated using the backed-up SQL and upgraded.
- Using the new empty database, run the backed-up SQL data on this database to populate it with the data currently on the existing website, thereby creating a duplicate in structure and data of the current web-site's data structure
- Download a fresh copy of the Drupal 4.7 application files, unzip and upload them the your webserver (I recommend uploading to a subfolder so that your live website is not disturbed until you have tested the upgrade)
- Adjust the settings.php file of the new 4.7 installation to point to the duplicate database
- Once you are certain that the 4.7 files are all on the server and the settings.php file has been adjusted to point to the new DUPLICATE of your live database:
- Enter the URL of your 4.7 installation (remember to point to a subfolder if you are not upgrading in the root - as per my recommendation above) and finish of with ipdate.php for example: http://www.domain.com/drupal47/update.php
- The upgrade script will connect to the 4.66 database (duplicate) and update all the tabled to be compatible with Drupal 4.7. At the end, you should see a 'completed message' without any errors (If the Drupal 4.6 to Drupal 4.7 Database upgrade fails, contact iDonny for custom help and troubleshooting)
