Things you need to know while reading this tutorial:
- This is a tutorial for Drupal newbies.
- My Desktop OS: Windows
- Server details: Ubuntu
- 3rd part software: Putty or any SSH Client.
- 3rd part Drupal modules needed: Backup and Migrate
- Skills required: Basic familiarity with Linux commands eg. sudo, wget, tar, cp, etc.
- There are other updating procedures including the much more efficient (but requires a higher skillset) Drush. Below is a mix of both ssh and browser that’s easier for most newbies.
Here’s how your admin/reports/status page looks when you need an update. As I write this it is saying I need to update Drupal Core from version 7.27 to 7.28.
Back up your database. I use the excellent Backup and Migrate module, once installed it would be at admin/config/system/backup_migrate
Place the site in Maintenance Mode at admin/config/development/maintenance
Now for ssh. Since I use Windows I use Putty, the best free SSH Client out there. Go ahead and login.
If not already there, go to the home directory of the website you are updating. In my case it is at /srv/www/iheartbf.com. In other cases it is /home/website.com.
Get the latest version link from the Drupal Core project page. Left-click the link to the tar.gz file like the below image and right-click ‘Copy link address’.
Now on your ssh client, type in sudo wget, then right-click after those words to paste the url of the tar.gz file.
After you right click the link will appear like this.
Press enter then it will download the file.
Untar the file: sudo tar xvzf drupal-7.28.tar.gz
Delete the /sites folder from the downloaded folder: sudo rm -rf drupal-7.28/sites/
Delete the .htaccess file from the downloaded folder: sudo rm drupal-7.28/.htaccess
Copy over the old core files: sudo cp -rv drupal-7.28/* /srv/www/iheartbf.com/public_html/
Perform an update. You can either enter yoururl.com/update.php on your browser or click ‘Run Updates’ like below:
Here is the update page. Press Continue and it will list all that is being updated.
After update, visit the admin/reports/status page, and it should now reflect the latest version.
Determine everything is ok.
Remove site from Maintenance Mode.
Clear your cache by visiting admin/config/development/performance.
