Drupal Site Maintenance & Security

Frequent updates and patches are a fact of life in the world of software. For Drupal sites, these affect both the Drupal core and the many contributed modules. Some updates are essential for security, others contain bug fixes or feature enhancements. How can you tell which updates are critical for your site? How often should you plan to update? What kinds of testing are useful for determining how an update interacts with other parts of your site?

We will share our team's strategies for managing about 15 sites, including a few tips for specific hosting environments (Pantheon and Acquia). We'll cover where to get notifications of available updates, how to get more information about what each update includes, how to tell whether past patches are still needed or can be retired, and some testing methods that we have not implemented yet but would like to add in the future. Audience members are welcome to share your own site maintenance strategies or tips.