Well, it is now a few months, and while I would like to go to 5.2, my test site still shows a lot of problems. Now I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to make the leap - and am wondering about the best next step.
First, the problem. Drupal depends a lot on modules and themes - I can imagine most users have enabled contributed modules and themes. And many are still in development stage for 5.2 - and have bugs, I can attest to it. Even Drupal core is not fully there - I just posted what I finally think is a blocks.module issue - took a few days (an hour here and there) to dig into this - see http://drupal.org/node/162899 for details.
And themes - like FriendsElectric - looks like many people used this - it is even mentioned in many Drupal handbook pages! But it does not have a 5.x version - this means all those using that theme will hesitate in upgrading. (This should also mean that all mention of FriendsElectric should be removed from the handbook - it is misleading to refer to this old theme any more. Though I suspect it may not be very difficult to fix that theme for 5.2 - only the links code may need changing.)
So, with so much time spent just trying to upgrade from 4.7 to 5.2, and having to repeat this again to 6.0 - here are the possible options:
1) Continue watching the modules, and core fixes, and provide as much info as possible, and eventually all needed modules will be reasonably robust, and usable.
2) With no immediate end in sight, start looking for other packages. Given that this lesson shows that complex packages mean a hard time applying upgrades, look for the smallest/least complex package that meets all requirements.
Clearly, (2) is not easy, and any newly chosen package (WordPress? Joomla? Others?) will likely run into similar issues.
So, stuck with (1) right now, but eyes open to moving to something completely different... Still running though all the tests to see what else is broken - or works differently in 5.2 than in 4.7.x
Comments
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From what I can tell in the handbook the pages that refer to the friends electric theme are tagged for version 4.7
Friendselectric was not updated for Drupal 5.x by the developer, and noone who is using this theme chose to update it, thus it has gone unupdated even though core dev's created a handbook page explaining what needed to be done to update themes from 4.7.x to 5.x.
contrib modules that don't get updated happen in every OS CMS. yes, even Joomla
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give a person a fish and you feed them for a day but ... teach a person to fish and you feed them for a lifetime
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you don't explain the steps you've taken to update from Drupal 4.7 to Drupal 5.2.
did you update to Drupal 5.1 first ? as teh release node states to do for the most trouble free update ?
see:
Upgrading
To upgrade Drupal, follow the upgrade instructions.
For the most trouble-free transition from an existing installation, it is recommended that you first upgrade to Drupal 4.7.6 or Drupal 5.1. If you are upgrading from Drupal 4.6.x or below, please consult the relevant release announcements. As with any upgrade, it is a good idea to back up your site and database first.
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give a person a fish and you feed them for a day but ... teach a person to fish and you feed them for a lifetime
No trouble upgrading - it is differences
Sorry, I am not sure why you took my posting to mean that I had trouble upgrading.
Upgrading is fine - it is the small things that work differently - sidebar block titles missing, modules not yet ready (like acidfree), etc. And the new things I've not found yet...
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um, acidfree does indeed have a 5.x version available. : http://drupal.org/project/acidfree, the -dev version does indeed work on a 5.x installation. If you are waiting for a formally released version with a number like 1.0, you may wish to file a support request and ask the developer when he intends to do so.
I've updated two sites from 4.7.6 to 5.2 and don't run into the problems you seem to be running into, that being said, I don't think they are common and if you skipped the step in between that may be the cause. Which is why i mentioned it.
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give a person a fish and you feed them for a day but ... teach a person to fish and you feed them for a lifetime
try new theme
If you get the time - can you run this test - requirement is that there should be a sidebar, with blocks, and the blocks should have titles. The Article module does not qualify - need some other block - for example, you may have a Copyright block, etc.
1) Copy over a new theme. This should be a theme that did not exist in your previous 4.x Drupal installation.
2) Go to the admin page, you'll see this new theme. Enable it, and make it the default (or use some other way to view your site with that theme.
3) Now look at the sidebar on your pages - are the titles for ALL the blocks showing up?
In my case, they don't - and looking into the database, I can see the blocks table does not have the titles for any new themes.
I've entered issues for both the above issue, and an AcidFree problem (which is unable to compute correct width/height for the img HTML tag, resulting in very small image windows in the albums). I'm sure these will be fixed - so I'll just wait - but that is the question - I can either continue to test the site and find more issues, or find if I can live with these issues.
Same story repeated with 6.x upgrade, too many problems....
Well, just when the water seemed fine to dip into 5.x from 4.x, I see 6.x is out.
So, I created a temporary site, moved my 4.x site there, upgraded to 5.x - now finally all modules I needed were ported! Then I upgraded to 6.x and things broke again - this has become a cautionary tale for anyone using Drupal - be very wary of using non-core modules. They are too complex, not easily ported, and break on upgrades.
I have not done a full inventory of 4.x to 5.x and 6.x upgrade problems, but got stalled at a big one - the image module database upgrade fails as described in issue #223255: error when updating to 6.x-1.x-dev. Looking at other issues in image, even those whose database upgrade succeeded, have lost all their images #222888: Images don't show anymore.
Attaching images to posts is quite a basic CMS function, so have to use a module for images and have that module still in development when 6.1 is out, seems not a very good release plan!
Anyway, I guess 4.7 is fine until it is unusable for security reasons.
18 months from planning to upgrade, still not all modules work
It is now over 18 months - actually more like 2 years since I thought it would be a good idea to get off 4.x and move on.
Had too much trouble getting all modules in 5.x to work, and then 6.x showed up. Tried to do a 4.x to 5.x to 6.x upgrade, but still many required modules were not functioning - I submitted some patches, and some requests for help, but it was all too much.
Tried again this week. No luck - even when Drupal is up to the 8th version in 6.x, i.e, 6.8, many modules are still "in development" and while some do work enough to be usable, some are just completely broken.
I wonder if I should just give up on future versions of Drupal. I spent over 60 man-days trying out upgrades at various times, and only having to give up after investigating problems.
Given the amount of time I've spent (really, fruitless wasting) I'll continue to plod along and sometime next year maybe 6.x and its modules may be usable.
In the meantime, when anyone now asks me about considering Drupal (or for that matter, probably any other CMS), I ask them if are ok with permanently staying with the version they first test - if yes, then go ahead. But all the promise of using external modules, etc will only mean you'll never have an easy time with any future upgrade. Looking at the comments by module developers, even they seem at least thrown off by the amount of incompatibility in each version of Drupal - god alone knows that dread lies in the Drupal 7.x minefield.
And all this is for a very simple site - but it does need image support, at least one simple forum, good support for spam (easy support - simple counting URL might work fine too), notification support (low volume, so need notifications). And Drupal is definitely unable to do this easily, as my travails can support. Wordpress would have been perfect, but it is missing some of this functionality - but I think it may have that now.
Next upgrade, after 6.x, will have to be to something other than Drupal, last two years have been a very poor ride. It is not going to be easy - I tried it in frustration once, but realized it would take around 4 weeks to do all the work so did not pursue it at that time. Little did I know that I would have to spend more than that struggling with Drupal itself. I have learnt my lesson.
6.x modules that had problems: image, token, pathauto, acidfree, spam, and loss of the friendselectric theme. This combination of modules is still not usable. For the themes, I made a customized version of garland, so don't need friendselectric anymore.
Oh well.