By Matthew Kivett on

My question is in regards to best practices and suggestions for managing multiple Drupal sites. I have found myself in a position where I have half a dozen or more drupal sites that I administer. When new updates come out, such as the recent 5.4 and 5.5 updates, I have to go through the process of putting each site into maintenance mode, backing up files and database, disabling non-core modules, reverting to default theme, copying the new files over, running update.php, re-enable custom theme, re-enable non-core modules, and finally return the site to online mode.

While this might not be much of an issue for one or two sites, it gets to be quite time-consuming and tedious as you have more sites to maintain. Am I missing out on some uber-geek method of site maintenance, or is this process an inherent requirement every time an update comes out? I have been trying to learn more about CVS and integrating it (via Eclipse) into my work-flow, but I'm not sure this even the right place to look. Can CVS be used to automatically roll out updates to all of my sites from a centralized location, or am I misunderstanding the purpose of it?

I have many questions and uncertainties when it comes to streamlining the maintenance work-flow. If CVS is not a solution to this, is there anything else that I can do to make the process easier/quicker? How necessary is it to disable non-core modules and revert to the original theme? If I left out these steps, would I open my sites up to corruption during updates? It can be quite a pain to go through your list of modules and make note of which ones you have active and which you don't.

I have been trying to learn more about Eclipse and how I can utilize it in my work-flow, but I am not really a coder, so I'm not positive I even need it.

I typically use a test site and database for developing new features, and then manually copy over the files, export the test database and then re-import it to the live database. Perhaps I am being too optimistic, but I feel like I am missing something in streamlining my work-flow.

Any suggestions/ideas/comments would be greatly appreciated.

Matthew Kivett | SpiraStudios.com

⋅ Categories: Drupal 5.x

Comments

cwinkler’s picture

cwinkler commented

I am new to drupal, yet no one answers a 2 year old question???? Where is the support?

cayenne’s picture

cayenne commented

This is a voluntary community.

Some questions don't get answered for a variety of reasons. Maybe they got missed, maybe they were incomprehensible, maybe they were being answered elsewhere.

Maybe they were asked by someone who develops a reputation as sort of a whiner, Chris.

In any case, it's my observation that once ones question is more than a few days old, if there are no replies, there will never be. In most cases, I think, the asker either finds the answer elsewhere or rephrases the question with the benefit of having talked about it.

There is a ton of support. Your profile shows that you have participated in many support discussions, though virtually always as the asker for help.

The support is YOU. Try answering some questions if you know the answer. I try to answer three for every one I ask.

As is said elsewhere, don't be a help vampire.

:)

ilw’s picture

ilw commented

Matthew Kivett has joined another forum topic with this matter: http://drupal.org/node/198284