Drupal 4.6

My content management software of choice, Drupal, just underwent a major update to 4.6. Naturally I wanted to try it out, so when Lotte had an assignment that required the quick set up of a website, I assisted by installing it and giving it a whirl. A fresh install was painless and rewarding. We spent about an hour sitting in the sun on Saturday morning outside A Minor Place (our favourite cafÈ) configuring the website on their wifi network. It's much nicer to set up a website when you are being served French toast and coffee.

So today I decided to upgrade eRoleplay.net to 4.6 (from 4.5.2) and met a few hurdles. Quite a few really. The update documentation is less than complete, it seems, and webmaster Joel was kind enough to help me track down the problems. Turns out we had to manually update the database in several places (making me wonder if the update script is really complete) and remove a couple of blocks that I had set up myself. After that Joel stepped back through the update process (there's a date-selector thingy on the update page) and things started working again. Phew, the database is intact and all my stuff is right where it should be. Now to re-install a few extra modules and we should be away.

If you're reading this as a content-management novice, Modblog is an example of a type of content management system. Drupal is one of a bunch of freely available systems that you can install on your own server (if you have access to a server). The advantage of this is that you have control over the features and the presentation of your stuff. You also have total control over your own data. Let's just say Modblog disappeared tomorrow -- where would your blogs entries be? The disadvantage is that they do take a bit of technical know how.