Last week many of our theme demonstration sites were not working. Users only saw a blank screen with "Fatal error" or "Warning messages". Thanks Hennie who reminded me about this issue.
The reason was our mistake when carrying out the Drupal update process. After update the Drupal core with the latest package Drupal 7.12, we forgot to run the /update.php script. That is quite amateur I know, sorry about that.
When you use our themes, we have include the Drupal core and contributed modules with our packages. When Drupal and those modules release new versions, you will need to update them. So I think it is good to provide a guideline for updating Drupal and Drupal modules because you will be frequently using it.
1. Backup
First, backup your Drupal site. Play it safe. If anything goes wrong, you do not lose anything.
- Backup database: We include the backup_migrate module with the installation profile so it will be out-of-the-box for use. Just go to /admin/config/system/backup_migrate and hit "Backup now".
- Backup code: just zip up and download your website folder
Then, put the site in "maintenance mode" at admin/config/development/maintenance.
2. Update Drupal core
The "update" word is used when you apply a newer fix of Drupal, for example, from 7.8 to 7.12. When you do a major change, from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7, it is called "upgrade". In this article, we just care about Drupal "update".
Please download the latest Drupal package from here: http://drupal.org/project/drupal, unzip and upload to your hosting to overwrite the old ones.
After that, please run update.php script, for example http://yourwebsite.com/update.php. Just go through the wizard until it ends.
3. Update modules
Please go to Reports -> Available updates then click on the Update tab. Unless you use some special modules which requires careful update process, you can just check all the modules and hit "Download theses updates".
Follow the wizard and you will run the update.php script. Finish it and that's it.
The site is still in maintenance mode, please turn it on. You site is now up to date.