By WisTex on

For those of you who have used Fantastico to install Drupal, there are a couple of things that you should be aware of when it comes time to upgrade:

The biggest thing to know is that Fantastico's upgrade script will delete any modifications, themes or modules you have added.

The recommended procedure* for upgrading is as follows:

  • Ideally you should install and upgrade Drupal yourself without using Fantastico.
  • If you modified the Drupal code or added any modules, you should upgrade manually. Do not use Fantastico to upgrade.
  • If you have not modified any of Drupal, have not added any modules, and have not added any themes, Fantastico may be a viable method of upgrading.
  • If the only thing you have added or modified is the themes, you can still use Fantastico to upgrade, but you will have to restore your themes manually via FTP (or other methods).

If you have only modified or added themes, one way of upgrading would be to:

  1. Backup Drupal (I know Fantastico backs it up for you, but to be safe, I would back it up to your hard drive anyway... might be useful if the server ever crashes).
  2. Take note of which themes you added or modified.
  3. Switch to a default theme to be safe (so you can login if there are problems with your added/modified theme)
  4. Use Fantastico to upgrade Drupal.
  5. Take note of the backup directory that you created or Fantastico created.
  6. Copy the themes you added or modified from the backup directory back to your Drupal installation.
  7. Change back to your added/modified theme in the Drupal Control Panel.
  8. Test to make sure it works.

I have tested this method on Drupal installations where only the themes were modified, and have not had any problems with this method. The more you modify, the more complicated the upgrade gets.

One major note though: Make sure the theme you are using is compatible with the version of Drupal you are installing. If not, and you switch to it, you may not be able to see your website properly.

I hope this helps.

*Recommended by me. This is not endorsed by Drupal, Fantastico, or your dog.

⋅ Categories: Drupal 4.7.x

Comments

thepocketgeek’s picture

thepocketgeek commented

Now that I have discovered that using Fantastico was berry berry bad for me (or rather, my drupal install) , can I remove their little control files and just manually update from now on? I don't mind doing the dirty work, I just don't want my newbness to screw up a few months of hard work...

Basically I am running 6.14 with a few standard mods and my own simple little theme.

silverwing’s picture

silverwing commented

You may want to install a WAMP/XAMPP/MAMP webserver on your home computer and work through the upgrade that way to see if the database can be upgraded without much fuss, then upload the whole new non-fantastico site to the server.

~silverwing