This site is based on the Drupal content management system. Imperial College Union (ICU) also uses Drupal. As am I’m one of the ICU Sysadmins it’s probably no surprise that I use the same version (4.3.2) of Drupal on the same server.
I wanted to upgrade the ICU installation of Drupal to 4.5.2 (the current release) to take advantage of new features, especially node-level permissions. Since I didn’t really know what I was doing I thought I should test the upgrade process on this site first! After a few hiccups the upgrade has gone reasonably well. The only data that seems to have been lost are the presentation customisation settings for the front page. In fact, I can’t actually remember the old message that used to be on the front page photo (or indeed, how I put appropriate white space around the photo using only CSS). If anyone can remind me I’d be extremely grateful!
Anyway, Drupal 4.5.2 looks much cleaner and fuller-featured. I guess I know (almost) have the confidence to apply it to the ICU web site. The only thing I’m worried about is the custom ICU theme. I think the ICU theme is based on one that is no longer available…
Photo sorted
Thanks to Richard Tang, the problem with ‘white space’ around my front page photograph has been sorted. According to Richard it is a “well documented CSS problem”. Basically an extra div element needed to be included with the style attributes “clear:both”. You’ll find a resonable explanation if you put “CSS clear” into Google.