Updating your Drupal website(s) has never been easier than it is now with Drupal 6 and the Update Status module that is in core and is also available for 5.x. However, you still have to actually go and 'do' the updates. You still need to login to your site, download the modules, install them and run update.php.

At UnderDesign, we are investigating the possibility of offering an update service for Drupal until and unless updates are able to happen automatically within Drupal. Before we go ahead and start to plan how we would offer such a service securely, affordably and reliably, we would like to try and get an idea of whether or not it would be used (makes sense, right?).

We've posted a short survey on our website and would be grateful to any Drupallers who would take three minutes to offer their answers and opinions. This is only a preliminary survey and we may be back to ask more questions.

In return for completing the survey, we're making a special hosting offer to everyone who helps us out by answering our questions. Details are on the survey page below:

www.underdesign.co.uk/drupal_website_update_service_survey

Thank you in advance for taking the time to complete our survey and helping us out. Much appreciated.

Regards

Patrick

Comments

stephthegeek’s picture

Filled out the survey!

Have you looked at the SoC project, Plugin Manager? http://drupal.org/project/plugin_manager
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Gorgeous, 100% original themes for Drupal 5 & 6, plus Ubercart themes

Patrick Nelson’s picture

Thanks for that Steph, much appreciated.

We looked at the Plugin Manager when we were considering our options and we are *testing* it in some of our Drupal 6 installations but we also have a large userbase on D5 (we currently manage just under 200 sites) and there are no plans to make that module available for D5.

We have quite a complex set-up here in order to manage updates for all the sites that we manage and it seems to make sense to see if we can offer it as a service - there are a lot of Drupal sites out there and if end users who have had sites handed over to them or developers that have too much on their plate are struggling to keep their sites updated, hopefully we can offer an affordable and efficient service.

Really appreciate you filling out the survey - I notice that you didn't go for the hosting offer. Any reason why? (I'm curious as to how that is perceived...)

Regards

Patrick Nelson
How are you coping with updates?

UnderDesign Web Designers and Developers in Nottingham and the UK
www.underdesig

stephthegeek’s picture

Just don't need hosting so it wasn't relevant to me :)

PS. I'm not sure how many North Americans (or elsewhere?) know what a "fortnight" is. Best in a survey to keep language as simple as possible.
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{ Drupal Themes by TopNotchThemes }
Gorgeous, 100% original themes for Drupal 5 & 6, plus Ubercart themes

Patrick Nelson’s picture

Good point! That seems to be a habit of mine Steph - I also write a blog for one of the stats software providers and the editor there pulled me up for using UK-lingo. Must be more indoctrinated into this country than I thought!

Thanks for your help.

Regards

Patrick Nelson
How are you coping with updates?

UnderDesign Web Designers and Developers in Nottingham and the UK
www.underdesig