The site was updated from Drupal 5.1 to Drupal 5.4 just before writing the following entry. The weblog entry describes how I went about upgrading Drupal version 5.1 to Drupal version 5.4

Before upgrading the site, I took a back up of the public html directory of stevejbayer.com on the webserver address of stevejbayer.com using FTP and then a backup of the database using phpmyadmin in cpanel. These weren't necessary but incase there were errors, I could just use the older version of drupal and its database. New versions of Drupal usually requires updating the database.

I then downloaded the Drupal 5.4 files and then using FTP I overwrote the older files of Drupal 5.1 When Drupal sites are being updated from different versions in the same generation (5.1 to 5.4 for expample but not Drupal 4.x to 5.4) , the only file thats really needed to be recalled from the back ups is the settings.php file found in (root folder or drupal folder in root)/sites/default directory. The settings.php file itself isn't really needed but replacing the new settings.php with the backup is a lot easier than re-entering the database username and passwords.

Once thats done you could continue to read the site as normal after a same generation upgrade but it is highly recommended that the database gets updated as well. To update the database I went to http://www.stevejbayer.com/(my drupal installation folder)/update.php and clicked on the link 'run the database upgrade script' and then clicked the update button on the next page. The upgrade was done and the Drupal site worked normally.

It is recommended to be a logged in as the main administrator before updating the database or one would have to change a line in the update.php file in the root folder of their site or their drupal folder. Updating the database when its not necesary can lead to errors and thats why Drupal by default allows only the main administrator to update the database.

To allow a user who is not the main administrator to update the database (in case during a lengthy back up process one forgets to log in as the admin before replacing the old drupal core files with the new ones) all ya need to do is change the line $access_check = TRUE; in update.php to $access_check = FALSE;

Don't forget to change the $access_check = FALSE; back to $access_check = TRUE; or any site visitor who knows how to find core files in drupal would be able to run the database upgrade script.