[haiku-web] Re: Grab your planners: Drupal 5 deployment

On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 2:40 AM, Niels Reedijk <niels.reedijk@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hello guys,
>
> I am hoping to start the migration to Drupal 5.15 soon. After several
> test migrations, I can conclude that the migration does not lead to
> important data loss. There are still some kinks in the cable, but my
> opinion is that it is preferable to work these out when the new
> website is deployed. With software as complex as Drupal, it is
> impossible to completely plan ahead.

Super!

> Now I will outline the plan below, but beforehand I would like to set
> the date. My hands are itching, and I would like to start as soon as
> next week Saturday (which is the 28th of February). Because I would
> like to work as a team, I propose starting at 16:00 GMT, which will
> translate to 17:00 for us in Western Europe, and 08:00 AM for the
> Californian crew. See below for the plan.

I *think* I can be available at that time :)

> PLAN
> -------
> The plan is to migrate to Drupal 5.15 with all our modules. The
> upgrade can be distinguished in three phases:
>
> 1. Low level work. This is the part where we create a new database,
> upload the data, prepare the website for upgrade and install the new
> software. I will do this part, I've done it before. This takes max 30
> minutes depending on the server load.
>
> 2. Software work. The new Drupal needs to update the database. Also,
> the custom modules need to be enabled. I found that it is better to
> enable these one by one, than to do this all at once. Because each
> module has some sort of database upgrade, this is scheduled to take
> about an hour. During this phase, we can also start reconfiguring the
> modules as they come up.

Preferably we would also take this opportunity to remove modules that
we no longer need :/

IMO, our Drupal install currently has a ton of modules that are either
not used at all, rarely used, likely unnecessary with newer versions
of Drupal, or way out of date.

> 3. Plumbing. This is the phase where I hope a group of people will
> help in comparing the old installation of the website with the new,
> and start fixing the issues we come across. I expect that blocks
> (those yellow thingies in the side-bars) need to be fixed, as well as
> some content templates.
>
> Now ideally, at some point on Saturday we have a website that
> basically functions and that can go live with a disclaimer. In a worse
> case, the plumbing session on Sunday will be required to make it work
> reasonably. Note that 'reasonable' in this case is decided by the
> admins that are on call Saturday and Sunday.
>
> CALL FOR HELP
> ------
> Now here is the call for help. First and foremost I am looking for a
> few people that know our website (and perhaps are admins already),
> that can help with the actual plumbing. I'll be there, and I hope at
> least two people can join me.

Yep, I'll definitely attempt to be there.

> Furthermore, I will make a call for help for people to browse through
> the websites and compare the old one with the new one, and point out
> the work to the admins on an IRC channel. This task does not require
> much technical knowledge, and can be described as a nice community
> task.
>
> Finally, I'm looking for some help in designing a simple but good
> looking page that tells people going to the Haiku website that the
> page is under maintenance. This is not a complex task, but I'm not a
> designer nor a HTML+CSS wizard (though I try sometimes), and I would
> like some help. Takes about an hour of work.
>
>
> So that's about the plan. Any comments? Volunteers?

I'm in...

I'd like to discuss a bit the differences in organization/tagging
features of Drupal 5 vs. Drupal 4 - the current use of
Taxonomy/categories on our website is pretty poor in my opinion - and
it's very difficult to locate anything useful.

I also was speaking with some people recently about re-organizing the
critical "noob" documentation to make it easier to locate from the
front page, and we have some ideas floating around that should
probably be committed to writing ;)

- Urias
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