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Nota Bene

Migrations costs for D7 EOL
March 15, 2022

While the Drupal security team has announced they are pushing back Drupal 7 EOL until November 1, 2023, that will come sooner than we think. This is not the time to be building new sites or new features on existing Drupal 7 sites. We can all use this extra time to thoughtfully migrate our sites into a CMS that will be supported long term.

So what does it take to migrate your site from Drupal 7 to a supported CMS on budget and on schedule? The first question is always: how much is this going to cost?

Here are some links to hosting services that we provide to our customers

 

Notes from Backdrop Live March 2022
March 14, 2022

Here are the sessions that I got to attend - lots of new information and lots of learning for me to do!

  • https://events.backdropcms.org/sessions/showcase-americas-best-bootfitters
  • https://events.backdropcms.org/sessions/upgrading-to-backdrop-cms-from-drupal-7
  • https://events.backdropcms.org/sessions/stanford-joins-the-backdrop-community

Notes

 

Drupal 7 End-of-Life date will be re-evaluated annually
February 23, 2022

Today announcement came out:

Therefore, we are announcing that moving forward, the scheduled Drupal 7 End-of-Life date will be re-evaluated annually. As of today, we are extending the end-of-life by one year to November 1, 2023.

Shows respect for a huge community that cannot afford to move to D9.   

More than a decade after its first release, Drupal 7 is still widely used across the web. It can be found powering civic engagement in government installations; managing vast amounts of content for faculty, students, and staff in educational institutions; and providing the digital backbone for many businesses and non-profit organizations. Drupal 9 is well-maintained, secure, stable, and feature-rich, but many organizations still rely on Drupal 7.

The teams that built and still maintain these legacy Drupal installations, and the end users they serve, are important constituents of the Drupal community. Although these users should still plan their upgrade to a newer version of Drupal, if they are unable to upgrade before the currently announced end-of-life, it would not be responsible of us to leave them vulnerable.

Thank you, Drupal Association, for keeping community a priority. 

D7 to BackdropCMS migration on Pantheon: WebUI+SFTP option
February 2, 2022

This blog post is based on instructions from various sources and shows step by step how we are moving D7 to Backdrop CMS within Pantheon hosting using WebUI+SFTP option.  There are many other ways to do that, but this one works best for our team. 

Prepare existing D7 site  

  • Update modules to latest version (e.g. views, rabbit hole, etc) (estimated time 5 min)
  • Disable modules that are not used/upgradable, etc.
  • Install https://www.drupal.org/project/backdrop_upgrade_status , click on “configure” to get to url /admin/reports/updates/backdrop-upgrade  and run report manually

    backdrop modules status

    (estimated time 5 min)
  • Delete unused content, e.g.
    • Unpublished
    • Newsletter

Set up new Backdrop site (estimated time 30 min)

Migrate your site (estimated time 30 min)

  • Export current D7 database and files via Pantheon dashboard

    export files
  • Import D7 db via UI on Pantheon into Backdrop site

    import files and db
  • Connect to Backdrop code via SFTP and update the following line in file  settings.php
// change update setting  
$update_free_access to TRUE

open sftp client

Known issues/errors

  • Created second role “administrator” and because of that existing admin could not see users - need to add role Admin to get access to admin toolbar
Update #1001

Failed: PDOException: SQLSTATE[23000]: Integrity constraint violation: 1062 Duplicate entry '3-administer account settings' for key 'PRIMARY': INSERT INTO {role_permission} (`rid`, `permission`, `module`) VALUES (:db_insert_placeholder_0, :db_insert_placeholder_1, :db_insert_placeholder_2), (:db_insert_placeholder_3, :db_insert_placeholder_4, :db_insert_placeholder_5); Array ( [:db_insert_placeholder_0] => 3 [:db_insert_placeholder_1] => administer account settings [:db_insert_placeholder_2] => user [:db_insert_placeholder_3] => 7 [:db_insert_placeholder_4] => administer account settings [:db_insert_placeholder_5] => user ) in user_update_1001() (line 238 of /code/core/modules/user/user.install).
  • Enable Project installer to add new modules