Site Upgrade
Posted on November 29, 2009 by agentrickard
At long last, I have gotten around to upgrading the site. I moved from Drupal 5 to Drupal 6. And at the same time, I consolidated my old WordPress 2.8.x blog into the Drupal 6 architecture.
Two tools make this possible. One, the pretty nifty WordPress import module for Drupal. (A hat-tip, as well, to WP's nice XML export feature). The second, of course, is Domain Access, which allows multiple subdomains to run from a single Drupal installation.
With Domain Access in place, I can branch out a bit, and separate different parts of the site (and my life) to different audiences. So, for instance, the main blog is still Second Goose, where I post work-related material. On the main site, TheRickards.com, will be the best from all sites, and maybe some family stuff (mostly dog photos, probably). For fun, there is \m/etal.therickards.com where I will talk about heavy metal and albums I like. And I set up API.therickards.com to host API documentation for various modules that I maintain.
There may be a little dust flying around for a few days while things get settled. Hopefully there aren't too many broken links on the site. I also have to get ImageCache and its family of modules running later.
Speaking Engagements
- Oct. 17-18 : PublicMedia Camp, Washington DC
- Nov. 11-12 : DrupalCamp Sweden, Stockholm
- Dec. 3: "Integrating Drupal" Webinar
- Dec. 12&13 : DrupalCamp Chicago
Contact me for availability.
Contact
- agentrickard [at] gmail [dot] com
Donations
Comments
us too
March 2, 2010 by Mark (not verified), 26 weeks 2 days ago
Comment: 300
Hey, we're just about done with wordpress for our MICR microsite. Any tips on moving from wp to drupal6? Kinda worried our database structure might get corrupt.
Corruption
March 2, 2010 by agentrickard, 26 weeks 2 days ago
Comment: 301
I didn't have any data corruption issues. The biggest problem is file handling, since WP likes to embed files directly in posts. I ended up simply moving the WP images directory to the new site and leaving the old img tags in the posts.
That could be cleaned up using QueryPath http://querypath.org/ and its Drupal module.
If you want fine-grained control, you can also use Migrate module http://drupal.org/project/migrate to move the data selectively. This might be helpful, since its usually a MySQL to MySQL transfer, and Migrate module lets you inspect the data as you import.
Essentially, you move select portions of the WP db to a new Drupal db. I only have two users, so I didn't have to worry about that, either. Posts and tags came across fine. You might also need to tweak PathAuto or similar for Drupal to ensure your URLs don't change.
MYSQL to MYSQL
March 17, 2010 by Mark (not verified), 24 weeks 21 hours ago
Comment: 309
That mysql to mysql looks like my best bet. Have to imagine there'll be some tweaking in store, but a good idea nonetheless. Hey, thanks.
Why would you need the domain
March 20, 2010 by Anonymous (not verified), 23 weeks 5 days ago
Comment: 310
Why would you need the domain module to created subdomains when you can do this via cpanel ?
Why
March 21, 2010 by agentrickard, 23 weeks 4 days ago
Comment: 311
Domain Access does not create subdomains at the DNS level. It registers them with Drupal to allow for contextual behavior.
The subdomains are managed via CPanel, yes. The Domain Access module handles content separation, theme settings, and other variations across domains. This is a single Drupal installation running of one database without table prefixing.
General site organization with DA and if can help
July 12, 2010 by Gemini (not verified), 7 weeks 3 days ago
Comment: 331
I read why you developed DA, and it makes a lot of sense.
I think your module is a better fit than sub domain.
I only started with Drupal a week ago and have over 50 hours in it so far and have read and re-read a lot of materials.
I installed DA and tested some basic features on 6.17.
I created a sub-domain in Plesk and then DA, Sample content worked well too
Before I beat my head against a rock too much I wanted to see if I was headed in the right direction and I know some of this might not involve DA too.
I am thinking mainsite.com is where all the users/profiles and global content would be used. I part of several groups on the Internet and they all have different interest but I will use this as an example:
Location1.mainsite.com
/Restaurants
/Nightclubs
/Events
Location2.mainsite.com
/Restaurants
/Nightclubs
/Events
Restaurants.mainsite.com
National Chains ( is this where I use vocabulary and terms?)
Completely unrelated domain 1
Say a Fantasy Football group meet at a restaurant for their draft. That would potentially be a link to a location and event.
I can see how a dynamic site could get very big but someone with interest in fantasy football, that lives in location 1 might want to see a feed that is happening thus a related content should show up on his profile page.
I know this is not completely DA related but thinking it would help me organize the website hierarchy.
That is as simple as I know how to explain what I would like to do. There are other ideas to add to the site later.
Your read me text is great. I learned a lot from it and the install was smooth.
I actually have two test going one with 6.17 and one with 7 Alpha 7 release.
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