Submitted by Omar Abdel-Wahab on Fri, 05/05/2006 - 16:46.

UPDATE (Tue Jan 30 22:56:03 EET 2007): eglug.org upgraded to Drupal 4.7.6.


UPDATE (Wed Nov 8 23:00:38 EET 2006): an upgrade test was performed, if you interested: http://eglug.org/node/2226
Drupal 4.7 was released few days ago. If you don't know already, eglug.org is powered by Drupal which means we should consider upgrading to the new version so we can enjoy the new features/possibilites, performance boosts and the better security.

We don't usually upgrade immediatly with a new release, it's always better to give it some time, if the release proves to be sound and safe, we upgrade. But until we decide to upgrade, let's make sure we will be ready for the upgrade when we want to.

What we should do now is to make sure that we have versions ready for Drupal 4.7 of the following components:

  • The modules we use.
  • Our php code snippets (which can be found in some nodes and blocks).
  • Our theme(s).

Let's see what are we missing to achieve the goal above.

Modules (0 modules need to be resolved)

This is a list of all eglug.org contrib modules:

PHP Snippets

Nodes:

Blocks:

  • Icons Bar block (this block of icons on the left). (code should work fine) needed only to take care of links and base_path().

Themes

We have only one theme

  • EGLUG theme. (porting the theme is not a big deal, we need to think of improvements though)

This upgrading procedure is one of the eglug.org administrators team tasks. But of course everyone is more than welcome to volunteer in many ways, like porting remaining modules, correcting/updating this page (as for example, some of modules above my be updated later with a 4.7 port by Drupal community).

The PHP Snippets may not need any effort at all, the above list is actually the result of a search in the database for all nodes with inline PHP code. Also, not everyone may be able to edit these nodes, but let's keep it here for now to make this document a complete list.

One more thing that's relevant to the upgrade procedure, with the new 4.7 (era) comes new (sometimes better) ways of doing things, like for example how Mail module is deprecated and can be replaced by other two modules, or Content Construction Kit is going to replace Flexinode. I think we need to consider these changes and how they are going to affect us. Needless to say, volunteering in this area is much appreciated.

Note

If you would volunteer in porting any code, it's recommended that you update this page to indicate this. That is to avoid having multiple volunteers working on the same thing without coordinating with each other.


Access

MSameer's picture

No access to edit.

Nodes: 843, 1016, 1758, 1892 => Access Denied.

No idea how one can help.


WWW: The place for organized randoms!

you can't use cck yet

Alaa's picture

you can't use cck yet unless you are ready to commit yourself to loads of work, cck lacks nice widgets and image support.

I'll try to spare sometime for thinking of 4.7 oppertunities that we could use, however proper unicode support on mysql 4.1 alone is enough to justify the upgrade. but this means we need a host with mysql 4.1

cheers,
Alaa


husband of the Grand Waragi Master

http://www.manalaa.net

we are on mysql 5

our current host is using mysql 5

CCK ?

MSameer's picture

Should we consider moving to CCK ? If so, We need to know which content types are flexinode and how many nodes per each dowe have. I guess we also need to work on a migration path.


WWW: The place for organized randoms!

interesting, alot has

Alaa's picture

interesting, alot has changed since we wrote this.

CCK is usable now yes, we probably have three flexinode types, the review type, the icon bar type and the event type.

no strong reasons to replace flexinode now though, I don't think it's affecting our performance or anything.

and it doesn't seem like using CCK will help ignite the community into action.

cheers,
Alaa


husband of the Grand Waragi Master

http://www.manalaa.net

Interesting, I didn't see

ikhnaton2's picture

Interesting, I didn't see that page before but after migrating my site to drupal 4.7, I may add my little opinion here.

diff module need some work, wiki is sucks, u should consider alternatives like liquid, mail stopped at 4.6 and no plans to be upgraded

I don't know if 4.7 is better, actually I don't feel any difference except few not essential things.

For volunteering, I'm willing to contribute if you still need that...

Peace,
Rami Sedhom
http://ikhnaton2.com

the one major advantage

Alaa's picture

the one major advantage for eglug is the proper unicode support in 4.7 which let's us benefit from proper unicode support in mysql 4.1 and above.

also stuff like views module can provide smallish imrpovements.

wiki and liquid are two different things, they can actually work together, wiki just provides a wiki markup filter, liquid is an engine, it comes with some markup filters but last time I checked they sucked, for best results use wiki with liquid (requires a tiny little patch).

mail was not such a great module to begin with, it didn't have cron support and it used to timeout without sending all emails, we need a better alternative.

cheers,
Alaa


husband of the Grand Waragi Master

http://www.manalaa.net

Wiki...

I've always wondered, isn't wiki simply:

page + privilege to read/write for everyone + any good way to write (e.g. wiki syntax, textile, smartypants, wysiwyg).

Why we need a liquid wiki or whatever other modules than we already have?

liquid wiki handles on the

Alaa's picture

liquid wiki handles on the fly creation of pages and wiki links, adds an extra way to manage wiki pages.

but it is not strictly required, our current wiki doesn't use it.

cheers,
Alaa


husband of the Grand Waragi Master

http://www.manalaa.net

All issues solved

All pending issues solved, tonight I will update the source to 4.7.6 which was released yesterday and will update eglug.org afterwards, I will need to bring down eglug.org for about 45 minutes while making the upgrade, that will be around 7 P.M today.

Upgraded to 4.7

eglug.org is now running 4.7.6.

test.eglug.org is now running the old copy, because I noticed some theme parts changed after the upgrade, so may be it's good to have the old copy for a week or so as a reference.

the source code for eglug.org is now available in a svn repository on my home pc. Run svn co svn://alienlabs.no-ip.org/eglug/trunk/drupal destination_dir to get a copy.

I'd like to thank MSameer and Alaa for helping in various ways with the upgrade.

please add a comment here in case you found any issue in the website.

Well done. I guess I

MSameer's picture

Well done.

I guess I have 2 things:

  1. The new comments used to have a new border instead of the normal black one. This might not be an issue for normal people but it's important for people with low vision like me. I'll try to fix it but I'd appreciate some help.
  2. The central table in the recent posts page seems to be a bit narrow than the old one. I'm not a real CSS guy so I doubt I can fix that!


WWW: The place for organized randoms!

mabrouk, I suggest going

Alaa's picture

mabrouk, I suggest going through configs and settings for all modules (specially access control), some new options been introduced, others where never properly set.

I also suggest updating translation to latest stable release.

that is unless you already did these things.

cheers,
Alaa


husband of the Grand Waragi Master

http://www.manalaa.net

The new comments used to

The new comments used to have a new border instead of the normal black one.

Confirmed, I just fixed that.

The central table in the recent posts page seems to be a bit narrow than the old one.

Hmm.. I can't seem to have the same issue, they look the same to me. http://eglug.org/tracker and http://test.eglug.org/tracker. You on opera right? I will take a look with opera and see.

I suggest going through configs and settings for all modules (specially access control), some new options been introduced, others where never properly set.

Going through access control was of course the first thing I did, but I didn't check any thing else options-wise. Will do.

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.