Upgrading Drupal

Hello,

I have a query regarding upgrading of my site from 5 to 6.

I'm using drupal 5 and I want to switch to drupal 6. I don't want to do a straight upgrade because I've left a lot of mess in the code and I think a fresh installation would be the best route in the long run. Now the thing is, I want to leave my drupal 5 site alive for reference or just to have an emergency backup. Is it possible to build a drupal 6 site somewhere on my server and swap it in when it's complete. I don't mind if I have to manually enter users back into the database (there aren't that many yet).

Hi there,
I am looking for a way to have couple of fields for Drupal users like phone number etc. However I am unable to find a way to add phone number field to the drupal user. Is there a way to change drupal user schema?

I appreciate your time.

Best Regards,
Chaitanya

I've read some differing opinions. Can someone settle this once and for all ... for a minor version upgrade, which of the following are necessary?

1) Switch to a core theme (such as Garland or Bluemarine) before the upgrade
2) Disable all contributed modules before the upgrade
3) Remove all old files and directories from the Drupal installation directory before the upgrade

Thank you.

I'm reasonably new to drupal and would like to perform a minor version upgrade (6.14 to 6.15). This is my first upgrade.

1) In the upgrade directions, it says to "ensure that the versions of all contributed modules match the new Drupal version to which you are updating." Do contributed modules have minor version numbers? Let me explain this question with the following example ... in mid December '09, Drupal 6.15 was released ... one of the contributed modules that I use was updated after this release (CAPTCHA, January '10) and another contributed modules that I use was last updated before this release (CCK, November '09). I assume that if I upgrade core to 6.15, I will also need to upgrade CAPTCHA, and then everything will work okay. I don't need to wait for a new version of CCK to be released that is compatible with 6.15, do I?

2) During an upgrade, I will need to disable all contributed modules, perform the upgrade, and then re-enable the contributed modules. When I do this, will the modules need to be configured from scratch again? As a simple example, if I use CCK, Views, and CAPTCHA modules and perform a minor version upgrade, I assume I won't lose the content types that I've defined, the views that I've defined, and the CAPTCHA that I've configured ... is that right?

I just upgraded to drupal 6.x from 5.x. So far a virtually event free transition. One problem is that I had a user setup and assigned to a role. In this role I assigned permissions to look at some reports. (UC orders, etc.) The permissions stayed but the menu links when user is logged in are not there and I can'tseem to get them back. I can navigate to the sections (logged in as that user) I have permissions set for the user by putting in the url but I can't figure out why the links are not showing when user is logged in.
Any help would be appreciated.