Mid-Atlantic German Shepherd Rescue (MAGSR.org), has been running on a D7 site since about 2015. One of the two people who built it (me) is still around. Too bad it's not the other guy. He really knew what he was doing!
It is probably past time to upgrade to D9. Unfortunately, my Drupal skills are not up to the task of a solo upgrade.
The areas in which MAGSR needs help are:
- Hand-holding for the upgrade process. I have a blank D9 site set up but haven't a clue of how to import the voluminous data from the D7 site or how to keep or get that data current once we are ready to throw the switch from 7 to 9.
- Theming: I am completely helpless in this area, as any look at the site from a phone will amply demonstrate. Plus, theming doesn't seem to me to be as simple as it was in D7 in that the availability of out-of-the-box themes is more limited.
- Coding: The guy who did the real heavy lifting in developing the D7 site created a couple of custom modules to ease use and maintenance of the site. I fully expect these to work with only minor or, possibly, no modification. But, if coding needs to be done, I'm probably not the right guy for it.
I'm not completely useless, however, in that I understand how the site is structured, can certainly transcribe our numerous views, and can generally carry out instructions if pointed in the right direction.
MAGSR is an all-volunteer, non-profit organization with limited resources, so your assistance would have to be viewed primarily (but not necessarily, exclusively) as a labor of love.
Placing dogs who have been abandoned, abused, lost, strayed, or surrendered into loving homes is our passion. Our site, MAGSR.org, is a vitally critical tool to achieving that objective. If you can help, please comment or contact me at web@magsr.org
If this post is inappropriate for this venue, or if there is somewhere else I should be posting, please let me know.
Comments
A few points regarding your post
So a few points
With all that said. Let me ask you this. Do you need to stick with Drupal? Drupal has become a full enterprise class system. That means it very powerful, but also very complex. If you don't have the expertise to rebuild it, you probably don't have the expertise to maintain it. Unless you're willing to go all in on learning it. Maybe you should consider switching to something else?
FYI: My VGSR Shepherd "Sienna".
Chris Desautels
Hi Chris!
Coming from the other guy himself, your advice is more than welcome. I hope you’ve been well. Have you visited lately to admire your handiwork?
The motivation to stay with Drupal arises from the fact that we now have about eight years of accumulated data (dogs, donations, applications, etc.) that I would be loathe to lose and don’t see a clear path as to how it could be ported to another platform. I understand that migrating to 10 involves a complete rebuild. Given my admittedly modest familiarity with Drupal though, going to D10 seems to present less of a learning curve than building from the ground up on new platform entirely.
I am agnostic as to whether we rebuild in 9 or 10. (It’s going to be a bear, regardless.) My understanding from what I have read suggests that a 9 to 10 port is fairly straightforward or at least there is an upgrade path, unlike upgrading from 7. I guess I assumed that the selection of modules ready now would be greater for 9 than 10. The module checker indicates that a substantial majority of the modules we use have D9 versions, for whatever that’s worth.
As for theming, I view that as a black hole and realize that we are going to have to find someone willing and able to theme for us.
Ironically, one of my areas of concern is whether the custom code you wrote for us (using taxonomy to populate select fields, for example) will port easily.
I really appreciate your input. You should know that the D7 site resulted in substantial improvements in both traffic and applications/adoptions. You really made good things happen for MAGSR.
Ian Hanigan
PS - Sienna is beautiful. I bet she’s a good girl.
Omg, I'm the other guy?!
Ian:
I'm the other guy you were referring too? That's funny. I remember helping you out all that time ago. I don't have any memory of delivering a finished product.
Anyways, there's no point in going to 9. It has no future. The amount of work going from 7 to 10 is the same as going from 7 to 9. Basically, v.10 is the same as version 9, but with all the deprecated code removed. That's the model that Drupal adopted when they redesigned the system with v.8. Through the major version life-cycle improvements are made to the subsystems. But the old legacy approaches are left in place as deprecated code, so nothing breaks, but the codebase get's increasingly bloated.
At some point, they draw a line in the sand and all the deprecated code is removed and voila, the next major version. The trick is to make sure that none of your custom code or modules are using the legacy methodologies. Because they won't work in the new version. None of that is going to help though because 7 pre-dates this new approach. Moving on from 7 will require a complete rebuild.
If you want to chat about this, maybe you still have my mobile number?
Chris Desautels
About porting code
Also, virtually none of the code will port over. Some CSS, and markup, maybe, but given the current standards of responsive design it's probably best to just rebuild that too.
There are other considerations as well, Basically because Drupal is now a much more complicated beast, it can really benefit from some basic infrastructure improvements to facilitate security updates and such.
Chris Desautels
I’m pretty sure I do. Let’s.
I’m pretty sure I do. Let’s. Let me know when you’re free.
I’m pretty sure I do. Let’s.
I’m pretty sure I do. Let’s. Let me know when you’re free.
Did you get my email?
Did you get my email?
Chris Desautels
Thanks for the mentoring
After our conversation I have gone from paralyzed with fear to merely terrified. Thanks for the boost!
I'm so invigorated I'm upgrading to 10 at this moment.