Drupal 6 to Drupal 7 upgrade tips?

Question

Drupal 7 is coming. Any tips for upgrading Drupal 6 sites to 7? Thanks!

Answer 1

1. main is of course, reading carefully UPGRADE.txt in distr of d7;
2. Find all contrib.modules installed on your site, that should have port to d7;
3. http://drupal.org/update/theme for upgrading your theme;
4. http://drupal.org/update/modules if you have custom module;
5. create clone of your site for testing upgrade.

Answer 2

Wait.

Drupal 6 will continue to work and be maintained in parallel for at least a year. Unless you've got a pressing need for Drupal 7 features, you're better off taking the slow route and letting the various contrib modules catch up.

Answer 3

It depends on how many contributed modules your existing site uses. Drupal 7 which is due out January 5th will have many nice new features which are worth an upgrade. That being said, if you wait a few months more, security issues will be fixed and tardy D7CX pledgers could be done their ports.

The best guage I have found for my own sites is the upgrade_status module which lets you know which category your contributed modules fall in - "Available, In development, Not ported yet". The last category is the one to be concerned about - if a module is no longer actively maintained, you may need to find an alternative.

The module also include Upgrade Assistant which

...helps you to do the required upgrade steps in the right and expected order, and additionally takes the upgrade path for contributed modules into account. If you consider to upgrade, simply enable Upgrade Assist (and its block) and follow the on-screen instructions to upgrade your Drupal site...

Answer 4

Don't upgrade until either all of your modules are D7 stable, or you can bring them up to speed yourself. And if you can do the latter, contribute that back to the community.