Drupal Help Needed: Website needs to be updated to Drupal 7/8

[Milian Wolff]

On Monday, April 25, 2016 4:39:43 PM CEST Kevin Funk wrote:
> On Monday, April 25, 2016 7:20:01 AM CEST Alexandre Courbot wrote:
> > On Mon, Apr 25, 2016 at 12:04 AM, Milian Wolff <mail at milianw.de> wrote:
> > > On Sonntag, 24. April 2016 14:45:14 CEST Alexandre Courbot wrote:
> > >> On Sun, Feb 28, 2016 at 10:08 AM, Aleix Pol <aleixpol at kde.org> wrote:
> > >> > On Fri, Feb 26, 2016 at 7:48 PM, Milian Wolff <mail at milianw.de> 
wrote:
> > >> >> Hey all,
> > >> >> 
> > >> >> our KDevelop website is still running on Drupal 6 which is now
> > >> >> officially
> > >> >> unsupported! We must act _now_ to update the website to Drupal 7.
> > >> >> 
> > >> >> Is anyone available to help in the effort? Otherwise I'll try to
> > >> >> tackle
> > >> >> this task myself. I'd rather spent the time fixing KDevelop of
> > >> >> course
> > >> >> ;-) So if someone in our user base has experience in that area -
> > >> >> please
> > >> >> step forward!>
> > >> > 
> > >> > Hi Milian,
> > >> > Thanks a lot! I wouldn't know where to start from.
> > >> > 
> > >> > Would it be possible to port it  less customized so we can upgrade
> > >> > whenever they release? For my blog I use wordpress and I haven't had
> > >> > issues with upgrades. I understand the needs might be different, but
> > >> > nowadays our website is little more than news and links to the wikis.
> > >> 
> > >> Sorry, this is an old thread but since I am in the same situation (old
> > >> websites running Drupal 6) I thought I might share my experience.
> > >> 
> > >> Kdevelop.org seems to be mostly (entirely?) a collection of static
> > >> pages. Have you considered moving to a static page generator? The
> > >> advantages are numerous:
> > >> 
> > >> * No need for PHP/MySQL, data is easy-to-read text files
> > >> * No upgrade stress, no need to apply security fixes on the server
> > >> beyond Apache/Nginx
> > >> * Edits are simple & clean, done using Markdown and pushed to a git
> > >> server
> > >> * Website is faster and more responsive since the pages don't need to
> > >> be generated
> > >> 
> > >> The only drawback I can see is that the data needs to be ported to the
> > >> static generator. In my case I only have a handful of pages so I just
> > >> copy/pasted the content's HTML into text files, but in the case of
> > >> KDevelop you may want to use one of the Drupal converters that exist
> > >> for most projects (or maybe just write your own).
> > >> 
> > >> I have chosen to use Hugo (https://gohugo.io/) but there are many
> > >> others that are probably equally suited to the task.
> > >> 
> > >> The biggest advantage to the switch is that you don't have to care
> > >> about the servers anymore. Is my server up-to-date? Will MySQL restart
> > >> properly after I upgrade? Oh no, I have to do a manual upgrade of
> > >> Drupal again, including putting the site off-line and running the
> > >> update scripts... All that is over. Git pull, edit, git push, and a
> > >> server hook regenerates the pages. Less time spent administrating,
> > >> more time spent doing actual development.
> > > 
> > > I thought a lot about this, and I still think about doing this for my
> > > personal website. And maybe in the long term also for the KDevelop
> > > website.
> > > 
> > > The biggest issue I had which refrained me from ditching Drupal
> > > altogether
> > > was>
> > > 
> > > the commenting feature:
> > >> Dynamic things such as comments can be delegated to Javascript and
> > >> external entities (like disqus), but it is also possible to host your
> > >> own comments server.
> > > 
> > > Disqus is not an option for a KDE website, imo, as they own the content
> > > and
> > > place quite some burden on the commenters. The only feasible alternative
> > > would be a self-hosted one on KDE infrastructure, but then we'd have to
> > > spent quite some time in migrating the drupal comments to the new
> > > infrastructure. And looking at the options for self-hosted ones, I found
> > > no clear answer as to which one to pick. Isso, Hashover, ... none of
> > > them
> > > seems to be "really" big and thus guaranteed to be around for long. If
> > > you have any suggestions as to what to use, we might want to reconsider.
> > 
> > I don't have any clear suggestion to make here, especially since my
> > solution to this problem has been to ditch comments altogether (I came
> > to *hate* web comments for the most part). That's maybe not an option
> > for KDevelop, although there are many other communication channels
> > (KDE forums, etc.) that could replace them.
> 
> Undecided here.
> 
> I like the comment section since it usually contains a number of interesting
> comments related to the topic (e.g. on release announcements): People point
> out problems in the release tarballs, or ask for installers on non-Linux
> platforms for this particular release. When pointing people to forums and
> mailing lists the information will be scattered around.
> 
> Not sure.
> 
> Something to discuss face-to-face in Randa maybe (/me adds a TODO item)
> 
> > My intent was to make sure
> > that you guys were aware of the options that require less maintainance
> > than a full-blown CMS (or in this case, none at all), since there
> > seems to be a lack of resources to maintain Drupal.
> 
> Drupal isn't the problem, IMO. It's a general lack of interest in
> maintaining and advancing/modernizing the KDevelop website.
> 
> And I think we'd still like to aggregate & store developer blog entries on
> kdevelop.org, I don't think that's easily doable with static pages.

True, I forgot about that part. Blog and comment aggregation (both via Atom/
RSS) is a nice addition to our website. What it helps in conveying is that our 
project is alive and kicking. But embedding a github-style heatmap could work 
as well for that purpose, with a link to phabricator pages for more details...

The developer aggregation could be handled by a separate planet aggregator, if 
needed. But that means additional maintenance there then, esp. for the 
themeing.

Bye

-- 
Milian Wolff
mail at milianw.de
http://milianw.de