December 2022

Updated Most of the 7.x stuff - still getting errors

  • Posted on: 10 December 2022
  • By: Jay Oyster

OK, I've updated about 20 different modules in the Drupal instance, including Chaos, Views, Media, Calendar, iCal, Five Star, and a bunch more, including attempts to update the Adaptive Theme. That latter doesn't seem to be 'taking'.

Anyway, I'm creating backups and working on doing the migration to v9 of Drupal. Unfortuanately, my understanding is that I need to do that through a copy/paste type deal. So I have to stand up a whole new instance at v9, and then migrate the content from the v7 to the v9 site. And then I'll have to fix everything that that breaks, which I expect to be a lot of stuff.

The big thing I'm going to miss is that I finally got the editing environment the way I like it. The Wysiwyg module and the various media and bulk media and photo upload and edit tools work great.  (Well, the bulk photo situation is not great, but editing individual stories is just the way I want it.) Hopefully the pain of going through this, and getting many of those 'add-ons' rolled into the core of Drupal will make stuff like bulk photo uploads work much better. We shall see.

So I've done a backup of the site itself using an updated version of the Backup and Migrate module (the most nail-bitey of the module updates I've done so far, but it seems to have worked.)  But now I need to log into the server itself and do my database backup. (sigh) Every time I do this, I have to re-learn it, since I only do it about once a year.

...I better get to it.

Part 2: Updated the footer to change copyright from 2020 to 2022. (It's in a Block. easy to edit. I had forgotten I'd fixed that to make it easier to get to.)

Fixes to the site continue

  • Posted on: 10 December 2022
  • By: Jay Oyster

Well, I'm still getting errors on the website, mostly related to a theme file I used to build it. I'm on Drupal 7, and unfortunately my understanding is that a) I need to upgrade to v9, but that is across a major chasm of changes, and b) the most painful of the changes is that most of the themes, and particularly the one I use, WILL break.

Anyway, I've patched what I can in v7 on my site and still have error messages. The ironic thing is that nothing is broken. I'm just getting error messages. (I mean, sure, something *is* broken, but none of it is preventing me from doing anything on this site. And since I don't let anyone else log in, I'm the only one that matters on the creative side. :-)  ) 

The quandary now is that I have about a year of small and medium projects to add to the site, along with updates to some of my ongoing long term projects. Do I add them now and risk them not surviving the migration to Drupal 9?  No, I won't do that. I'll update status here as I'm working on this, but I'm holding off on my project and shop updates until I get this thing updated.

The bottom line, you may see this site go completely off-the-rails at some point as I'm working to fix things. It makes no sense for me to have a full, offline Dev and Test instance, so I will be fixing in Production . . . so to speak. My professional IT self shudders at the thought. But them's the realities.

Wish me luck!


Still Around

  • Posted on: 1 December 2022
  • By: Jay Oyster
Work continues . . . but catching up on website updates

I'm still around. It's just been a busy year.   A quick summary and catch-up-to-speed on things . . . and some notes on this website.

I'm still around. It's just been a busy year. I've switched jobs and finally have a bit of time to myself to breathe. Working for E*Trade was nice. When E*Trade was bought by Morgan Stanley . . . it was different. Mostly, the people are nice. The organization has a tendency toward patronizing behavior. That's toward both employees and customers. And the need to work both for E*Trade goals and Morgan Stanley bureaucracy was, frankly, overwhelming. So I quit.

But this site isn't about my professional life . . . much. It's about my hobbies and woodworking and privately-held opinions.

So, I have done some woodworking in between things this past year. I just haven't had time to update the website. As you may also see from some errors showing up on the site itself . . . I have some maintenance to do.

I plan to keep the site around forever. It's where I can say whatever I like. (Although I am finding Mastadon to be awesome as well . . . but this is where I can publish things and keep them around as long as *I* like. So I will. I just need to bring it up to speed and fix a couple minor issues. 

Oh, and I have some great woodworking and shop updates to get documented and put out here. I'll get it done soon.