New Hope Update has begun

I've started the software update for the New Hope web site. I've got the main Drupal system updated, but I haven't started on the modules. I'm doing the updates to a copy of the site so the current site can still run in the meantime (so don't bother looking for changes as they won't show up until we're done).

The trickiest bit is going to be that some of the modules we use on the current site are used because Drupal was lacking certain features that it no longer lacks. The other tricky bit will be the modules that are being discontinued in favor of better solutions--i.e., I'll have to do some conversions.

Here's the list of modules that need to be updated:

• event. I also plan to install eventrepeat as part of this process so that we can start showing recurring events, like Sunday mornings and youth meetings.
• flexinode. I'm going to replace this module with the content construction kit if I can. If it will be too painful, I may leave this for an update in a month or two.
• form_mail. I don't know what to do with this. I don't know what is available for this functionality.
• forms. Ditto.
• notify. This will either be an upgrade or I'll use a better notification module (not that there are many good choices for this functionality, according to my recent research).
• sermon_customizations. I hacked in some functionality to make Podcasts and some other bits to work correctly. Most of this can probably be ripped back out.
• taxonomy_assoc. This module associates nodes with vocabularies and terms. This is used in some important places, so I'll have to see what to do about this one (or just update, if possible).
• taxonomy_context. I can't honestly remember what this does at the moment, but I think this is a ditto of the last comment.
• theme_editor. I'll have to find out from Eric if this is still needed. I may just turn it off.
• tiny_mce. This is important. This makes it possible for our staff to post to the site without knowing any HTML or special document formats. I'll probably need to discuss with other stakeholders what features to include in the future too. There has been some disagreement about which functionality should be available to authors.
• urlfilter. This is used to turn http://... strings into links when someone doesn't link a URL. This is probably a trivial update.

The last bit that I'll need to update is making sure the script I've written to allow Tony to upload recorded audio also gets a face lift. It'll surely need a few changes. I wrote this script to get around upload restrictions set on PHP code on our host and to help standardize the MP3 tags in the audio for the Podcasts.

That pretty well summarizes my plans for the next launch. Eric is going to be responsible for importing the design that Jay Risner has put together for New Hope. I hope we can get the first release knocked out by the first week of September. I'd like it to be before the students return, but that may not be realistic given the data conversion I'll have to perform and some of the remaining design questions Eric has. We'll get it done.

Cheers.