Using Aegir

(i'm trying to make some documentation of using drush & aegir, please give me some feedback)

Start with watching the screencasts:

Installing Aegir from scratch & Aegir in action

Migrating sites to aegir

• aegir doesn't import sites/default
• mv sites/default sites/actualdomain.com
• leave a symlink to sites/default in place
• (you need to do this, because aegir has no way of knowing what the site is if it's in default)
• migrate the database (dump file -> run drush sql conf for the mysql configuration settings )

Modules

• installing modules can be done by hand or using drush
• use drush dl modulename in the drupal root directory and it will install it in sites/all/modules (create directory first)
• when you change the contents of the platform (add or remove modules and themes), just create a verify task for the platform which will pick up new modules / install profiles / languages

Modules in sites/mydomain.com/modules

• switch to the multi-site directory (sites/mydomain.com/)
• run drush dl modulename

Upgrading modules using Aegir

• in the aegir model, create a new platform with the latest code / add the platform node
• migrate the site to the new platform
  (this allows safe rollbacks and stronger error recovery / dependency checking)

Updating modules inline (using drush)

• switch to the multi-site directory and run
• drush enable update
• drush update

Using Subversion to update modules

• check in drupal and a set of modules
• if you want to add new modules or update old ones, add them to the repository and make a new branch
• check out and add as a new platform and move all the old sites over

How to create installation profiles