By gspot3802 on

I'm new to Drupal and starting a new job in 2 weeks. They are running Drupal 6.15 and want to upgrade to 7 soon. Also, need to stand up a development site because only running a production site now. Which should I tackle 1st? Thank you!

⋅ Categories: Drupal 6.x

Comments

dnewkerk’s picture

dnewkerk commented

Development site first, as you should test the Drupal 7 upgrade locally first in any case before trying on a live production site. If possible, I recommend using Git in the mix as well. If it will just be 1-2 developers, I've had good luck thus far with Unfuddle (gives you a free private repository).

Once you have a local development copy of the site, I'd suggest next testing upgrading to Drupal 6.26, then get that upgrade onto the production site as soon as possible (many serious security issues in the version they are currently running). You have to upgrade to the latest Drupal 6 in any case before you can move to Drupal 7.

gspot3802’s picture

gspot3802 commented

Thanks but the company site is already live. Does that mean it's already a production site. Perhaps they are mistaken???

dnewkerk’s picture

dnewkerk commented

Well yes, the term "production site" refers to the site that is running online and available to the public. It's ok if they already have this, but don't have a development site in place yet - that can be dealt with.

What you need to do is download a fully copy of the live site and set it up on your own computer (whichever you will be developing the site on). To do this, download a copy of the database through whichever tool you have available (most hosts have cPanel, so if that's the case for you, you can either go to the "Backups" category and download the database there, or if you want to be absolutely sure that you get the latest copy, you can export it using phpMyAdmin in the "Databases" category... if you have a different panel, they usually have similar tools, just different names). Then also download a fully copy of the site's files.

You'll want to get a local server running, so depending on your operating system, get either WAMP, MAMP, XAMPP, etc (google for info, plus guides or videos illustrating how to set it up).

Once you have your local server, you'll create an empty database, import the one you downloaded, put Drupal's files in place, and the site should come up looking the same as the copy running on the production server.

At that point you will always first test any changes on this local copy before doing so on the production server. If you want to reduce duplicate effort, this is where you should learn about implementing Git (version control) into the workflow.

gspot3802’s picture

gspot3802 commented

Do this during my first week of work 6/5. I'm trying to learn Drupal by viewing videos on Lynda.com and think I can handle content and pictures updates. But, I don't want to tackle the update issue after reading all the technical glitches that can occur. Do you offer this as a servcie for a fee? If so, can you give me an estimate? Please feel free to email me at babygab2020@yahoo.com if you prefer not to post here.

Thank you.

Geraldene

dnewkerk’s picture

dnewkerk commented

Hi Geraldene, I've sent you an email. Thanks!