Last updated February 3, 2012. Created by cel4145 on May 3, 2006.
Edited by starchild, LarsKramer, LeeHunter, Amazon. Log in to edit this page.
Before you begin the actual upgrade, determine which interface methods are available for you to use to update your site. The server you use to host your site may limit you to one of the following options:
- Command line. Via SSH terminal access, you can connect to the server, enter commands directly, and complete all the steps in the upgrade. Drush also has a site-upgrade command which can do some of the tasks.
- GUI. You can use phpMyAdmin, a browser-based MySql interface, to do anything you need on your database. And you can use any FTP client, such as FileZilla, to transfer the files for your Drupal site from your desktop to the server.
Once you have determined whether you will use the GUI or command-line version (or a bit of both), you're ready to prepare to upgrade by following the instructions given in this section.
Comments
Wow, this upgrade documentation seems very confusing these days.
I have noticed that the upgrade documentation has become much more complex lately. Myself, I like to upgrade through SSh and here is a link to a great article to do just that.
If you admin for drupal you surely have learned how to SSH by now so how about checking out this upgrade document I found that it gave me great advice for how to do the upgrades with the least amount of frustration. The article showed me how to protect my config files etc while upgrading my drupal.
I found this write up to be so simple, straightforward and makes it easy to not mess up an upgrade while using SSH Command Line.
If you are new to SSH then check out this 'cheat sheet' of commands to get you going.
Don Moody
Personally....
I'm really hoping this will get a lot easier in 7. It's not that I can't work through all these instructions, but the whole process does seem somewhat esoteric.
If Wordpress can do it...
This is one aspect of Wordpress that really impresses me. I can have my whole site backed up and a new version of WP installed in mere minutes. If WP can do it, surely a Drupal developer can do it, no?
These directions are incorrect
The following sentence (from the above directions) is simply untrue:
"Drush also has a site-upgrade command which can do some of the tasks."
# drush site-upgrade
The drush command 'site-upgrade' could not be found. Run `drush cache-clear drush` to clear the commandfile cache if you[error]
have installed new extensions.