- Sign consultant agreement
- Introduce consultant to Web site
- Discuss how we will work together
- Review initial work order
- Discuss questions we currently have about Drupal migration and areas where we expect to need his assistance
Ann Gruhn, Walt Daniels, Bill Roehrig, Kipp Watson, (Ed Goodell)
- Walt will give Kipp Watson ftp access to the site
We went over the Work Order template on the Web site -- once a work order has been estimated and approved, its status is set to Approved. This means work can begin. When all is completed, deliverables are accepted and final hours posted, it is set to Completed. This means an invoice can be processed. In some cases, there may be intermediate checkpoints that will also permit invoicing when the defined checkpoint is met.
The initial work order is for ad hoc consultations -- answering questions, researching problems and estimating new work orders. Kipp will log activity against this work order using the Change Log capability on the Web site and invoice activity monthly.
- Ann or Walt will add a field to the Change Log to permit tracking of time spent.
We discussed activities for Kipp to look at:
- Getting panels to show up and work properly.
- Figure out why primary links don't work.
This activity will start once Walt has rebuilt our test system.
We discussed how Walt plans to rebuild the test system. Walt said he needs to use rsynch to get a fresh copy of /files on the test system. Kipp suggested we look at GitHub.
Walt explained that nynjtc.org is our live site and .com is an overlay on it. nynjtc.net is the test site.
We also discussed that VMWare is strong on making a clean copy of a site.
Kipp asked if we want him to provide an update process for us as a deliverable. We deferred a decision on that.
Kipp suggested the following procedure:
Identify clean D5 content
Copy it to test site
Update the panels module to D6
Import the D5 content into D6
Walt said that he instead will:
Blow away D6
Import D5 with contribs turned off
Investigate any error messags that occur
Kipp also suggested we investigate using Notepad++ as it is better than Notepad
We discussed the D6 issue with setting weights for the ordering of blocks
We talked some about Ubercart and the need for some programming updates when we turn it on in the test system. Walt explained where the custom code is.
Kipp's participation as consultant can be summarized as follows:
- Available for technical questions related to Drupal
- At today's session he contributed with suggestions re panels (problem may be due to missing template files), an appropriate development environment (Notepad++, GitHub), and how to change the timing of our backup procedure so it starts in the middle of the night instead of evening prime time, other site configuration parameters.
The meeting ended with no outstanding items for Kipp to work on at this time. Once Walt has rebuilt the test system, we will get together again to discuss additional questions and work orders. Hopefully, this will be within the week. (Note ... we missed that target.)
Comment: Please be relevant, civil, non-commercial.
Additions to Ann's minutes
"Kipp suggested the following procedure:Identify clean D5 contentCopy it to test siteUpdate the panels module to D6Import the D5 content into D6Walt said that he instead will:Blow away D6Import D5 with contribs turned offInvestigate any error messags that occur"
I would modify slightly to say that Walt said he would start fresh, update the core modules from D5 to D6 (no contribs), update the panels module to D6, import clean D5 content then investigate any error messages
An additional recommendation I made was to consider the use of redirection to a test site in the early morning hours during transition from D5 to D6 to minimize/eliminate disruption to ubercart transactions.