Upgrading Acquia Drupal

To upgrade your server's Acquia Drupal installation from a previous version of Acquia Drupal based on the same major Drupal version number (for example, upgrading an Acquia Drupal 7 installation to a newer 7.x version), you need to prepare for the upgrade, install the new version of Acquia Drupal, and then inspect your server after the upgrade.

Preparing for the upgrade

1. Download Acquia Drupal from the Acquia Downloads page.
2. Back up your website's code (everything in the Drupal root directory) and database.
3. Open a web browser, and then sign in to your website as the main administrator account.
4. Place your website in "Off-line" mode. This allows the upgrade process to update databases without interruption and to prevent site visitors from seeing error messages. To change the mode:
   
   1. In the admin menu, click Configuration, and then click the Maintenance mode link.
   2. Select the Put site into maintenance mode check box, and then modify the Maintenance mode message that you want to display to your website's visitors during maintenance.
   3. Click Save configuration.

Installing the upgrade

1. In your Acquia Drupal document root (docroot) folder, examine the following files for any changes that you've made:
   • .htaccess
   • robots.txt
   • .gitignore

   Save the files or note your changes, because you will have to reapply any changes after you upgrade Acquia Drupal.

2. Except for the sites folder and its subfolders (and the .git folder if you're using version control — including Git or SVN), delete all files and subfolders from your Acquia Drupal docroot.
3. Create a temporary folder outside of your docroot, and then extract all of the Acquia Drupal files from the installation archive into the temporary folder.
4. In the temporary folder, delete the sites folder and its subfolders.
5. Copy the contents of the temporary folder into your Acquia Drupal docroot.
6. In your web browser, open http://[site_url]/update.php, where [site_url] is the URL of your Acquia Drupal server.
   
7. Reapply any changes you made to the .htaccess, robots.txt, and .gitignore files before the upgrade.

Inspecting your server after the upgrade

1. If you're upgrading to Acquia Drupal 7.24.26 or greater from any version of Drupal using 7.23, 6.28, or lower, and your server environment uses Apache (including Acquia Cloud), you must modify your files directories' .htaccess files to resolve a security vulnerability. For information about how to modify your .htaccess files, see Modifying .htaccess for Security announcement SA-CORE-2013-003.
2. Restore website access for your site visitors. To do this:
   
   1. In the admin menu, click Configuration, and then click the Maintenance mode link.
   2. Clear the Put site into maintenance mode check box.
   3. Click Save configuration.

Your website now uses an updated version of Acquia Drupal to serve webpages and content to your site visitors.