Hello.

I am currently hosted on hostgator and have installed Drupal via the Fantastico/cpanel scripts.

My question is "how can I upgrade to the latest version?". Please note that hostgator or fantastico does not offer support for drupal....only the installation and that's it.

What do I have to watch out for...? Will my data get erased?

I do not know how to back-up files or if hostgator will allow me to back-up files.

Seeking a simple step-by-step guide for a pure newbie.

Thank you.

Comments

miasmo’s picture

I also use hostgator and have just finished upgrading from 4.4.2 to 4.5.8.

I am not technically advanced at all, but I will attempt to share what I have figured out:

You will need to backup your current site and also your database. (Backing up the database is very easy using phpmyadmin.)

Go here:
http://drupal.org/upgrade/

I advise you to read this all the way through (without doing anything):
http://drupal.org/upgrade/tutorial-introduction

Then go here for any version specific steps you might need to take before starting the upgrade process:
http://drupal.org/node/75047

Then go back here again and follow the step-by-step upgrade procedure:
http://drupal.org/upgrade/tutorial-introduction

It seems that the generally recommended procedure is to upgrade one version at a time. For example, don't go directly from 4.5 to 4.7. Instead upgrade first to 4.6 and then go from 4.6 to 4.7.

I am in a similar situation as you, so I will be glad to share any info I have figured out so far. I was actually about to post a question myself, so I will mention it here:

I am trying to upgrade to the most recent version. I just finished successfully upgrading from 4.4.2 to 4.5.8. Does it matter which version of 4.6.X I upgrade to on my way to 4.7?

newbie8-1’s picture

Will be trying it out. I have 2 sites both Drupal with hostgator and will test it with the smaller site with less data first.

miasmo’s picture