Upgrading Drupal

Hello all
My first ever post. If this is not the right forum, please could I be redirected?
I have been juggling music and video with computers professionally for 25 years, but have no experience of programing of web based technology.
I have a site up and running - a certain amount of sighing and head scratching involved but it's there (http://labecedelauragais.com/) yes I am English, but I live in France.

Hi,

I'm in the process of upgrading a site from Drupal 5 to Drupal 6, and I've run across a strange problem. In the upgrade process, so far I've found 2 different contrib modules (user relationships and guestbook) specify as part of the upgrade (in the upgrade portion of their .install files) to change their primary key column to be type "serial". After some investigation, it seems one of the attributes of a serial column is that it is set to auto-increment. The problem I'm seing is that the columns for some reason did not get to auto increment, and did not get set to be primary keys. The result is, for example, that all new guestbook entries were getting created with the same ID of zero. This leads to faulty behavior of the module. Once I discovered the problem I manually set the columns to be autoincrement, deleted the entries with ID = 0, and everything works.

However, I'd like to figure out why the upgrade of the tables wasn't properly executed so that I can upgrade safely in the future. Also, is there a way to get drupal to compare all the contrib module's .install files to the actual database definition and report any discrepancies? That would sure beat manually checking dozens of tables.

I'm on a dedicated host, running php 5.2.8 and mysql 5.0.45.

Does anyone have any ideas as to what might have caused these tables not to upgrade properly?

I was informed on how to back up my database with phpadmin. i do not currently have phpadmin installed but my site is nearly complete and i need to back it up prior to upgrading modules.

will installing phpadmin now screw things up?? will it interfere with everything i've done or will it install and be functional with no negative consequences??

Thank you so so much for any help.

I have missing theme thumbnails and themes malfunction upon upgrade from 5.16 to 5.19. Following the instructions in UPDATE.txt, I backed up the files and sites directories and copied them into the new install as directed. However, I did change the root directory of my drupal install during upgrade. Could the root dir change be the problem? If so, is there a fix other than moving back to the old root dir? Please share your thoughts on probable cause and passable fix. Thanks

How to upgrade Drupal while current installation is working fine but in admin section an error in red color is showing demonstrating to upgrade your Drupal ? I want to know how this up gradation will occur ? What Steps I have to do for up gradation ? What benefit will be provided to me after this up gradation ?

I am looking to update modules and themes of my Drupal site and want to back everything up prior to doing that.
Would someone walk me through a simplified way of backing up a drupal site??

I got onto the mysql site for database backup instructions, but they are all shell command based and i'm on windows. So i need to know how to back up my database as well.

i am using:

Drupal 6.13
Windows Vista
Apache 2.2.11
PHP 5.2.10
MYSQL 5.1.36
Using Zen Theme

Thank you so so so much for any help!