Eliminate footer message

On further review, the drupal_set_message() has a bug, where it says $bid_max + 2, it should be $bid_max + 3 instead, just like how the INSERT before it already uses that. Otherwise still looks good to me :) Fixed patch attached.

@webchick: the theme can still have 'footer' as the internal name for the region and have a nice name for the user, so it could still have a 'footer' region displayed with a different name.

Also, while going through themes, we could technically go through all regions of the theme at hand, and look at whether it has a footer region. Then if it does not have that, we can do something else. If we do not enable the block in that case, the user will not get a call to action to fix it. Now if the blocks page finds a block put into a region, which does not exist, it immediately prints the error and lets you reposition the block.

In the latest mission statement patch, I have this text at the end: 'If your theme does not have a highlighted content region, you might need to <a href="' . url('admin/build/block') . '">relocate the block</a>.'

We can obviously adapt that and add that in. I think we cannot overcome manual work on the administrators part if there is no region named 'footer', but the best we can do is to attempt to put the block into that region, because then the user is alerted about the misconfiguration. Otherwise the block would be just "lost" among the possibly long list of disabled blocks.

Added requested language to the message in the patch:

'If your theme does not have a footer region, you might need to <a href="' . url('admin/build/block') . '">relocate the block</a>.'

IMHO it is good to go.

Right, there are some issues with the $bid counting, which prevents the upgrade path from working right. I went in and fixed the issues in http://drupal.org/node/428800#comment-1574840 (in the site mission migration patch). Marking this postponed on that one, since I am not going to have the same fixes multiplied :)

Now that the mission statement patch landed, I've rerolled and tested this one. Since there is no new functionality, only the upgrade path was tested. I've set both mission statement and footer and run testing on the upgrade. It works. Some screenshots to illustrate the changes:

Messages after update:

Blocks after update:

Site information settings on Drupal 7 with patch:

Looking at this last screenshot, I realized the anonymous user settings should not be at the site information settings at all. Should be moved to the user settings. Patch solving that at #460296: Clean up user settings form.

Great, documented the change at the themers upgrade guide:

http://drupal.org/node/254940#footer-message

Footer message removed

In Drupal 6, the page template received a special variable called $footer_message, which contained the footer message setting of the website. This was usually output before the footer region ($footer) by the template. Drupal 7 recognizes, that the footer message was just a special type of user defined block. Those who had this setting in Drupal 6 will get a user defined block in the update, positioned in the $footer region.

To update your themes, just remove the $footer_message variable from them.

If you happened to output the $footer_message in your page template, but did not yet support the $footer region, now might be the time to start supporting this region. If you don't override any regions, the footer region will be predefined for you. If you do override regions, please output the $footer content in your page template and include the footer region in your .info file:

regions[footer] = Footer

Support for the footer region is just suggested but not required by Drupal. Those upgrading from Drupal 6 with a theme lacking support for the footer region will be able to reposition their block to another region.