Introduction

What began as a simple question about migrating a Drupal 6 website and gallery to Drupal 11 evolved into a digital archaeology project spanning more than twenty years of hobbyist history.

The subject of the investigation was Cheddarmongers.org, a community site dedicated to miniature gaming, painting, and related hobbies. Over the years, the site ran on multiple versions of Drupal and relied heavily on Gallery2 for image management. Like many hobby sites of the early internet, it accumulated thousands of photos, tutorials, blog posts, and user contributions.

The challenge was not simply upgrading software. The challenge was identifying and preserving the site's true historical and informational value.

The Original Goal

Initially, the objective was straightforward:

The site had already been resurrected in DDEV using a backup, and the question was how best to migrate it.

However, as more information surfaced, it became clear that migration was only part of the story.

Discovering the Site's History

Several clues emerged from Wayback Machine captures and old blog posts.

Welcome to Cheddarmongers! | Cheddarmongers (on Wayback)

A September 2007 Wayback capture showed a thriving hobby portal featuring:

• Gallery
• Tutorials
• Blogs
• Forums
• Contests
• User-generated content
• Recent photos and community activity

This was not just a personal website. It was a functioning hobby community.

An old homepage post from September 29, 2011 provided another important clue:

"My goal has always been to make it so that the links in the site stay so that if you ever link to a picture or page here, your link wouldn't go bad."

This concern for URL permanence became a recurring theme throughout the site's history.

Reconstructing the Technical Timeline

Based on the available evidence, the likely timeline became:

2003–2004

Cheddarmongers launches on Drupal 4.

2004–2005

Migration to Drupal 5.

2005–2011

Long and successful Drupal 5 era.

Gallery2 becomes deeply integrated into the site's identity.

Early 2011

Migration from Drupal 5 to Drupal 6.

2011–2019

Years spent evaluating:

• Drupal 7
• Gallery2
• Gallery3
• Gallery bridge modules
• Alternative gallery solutions

By January 2020

A backup restored successfully in DDEV revealed:

• Drupal 7
• Gallery2 tables
• Gallery2 data
• Gallery3 files

This proved that a Drupal 7 migration had already occurred.

2021–2022

Wayback captures indicate:

• Gallery integration struggles
• Site restructuring
• Decoupling of Gallery2 from Drupal
• Continued search for sustainable solutions

Solving the /prod Mystery

One mystery involved Wayback captures referencing:

http://www.cheddarmongers.org/prod/

At first glance, this appeared to indicate a migration problem.

Eventually the true explanation emerged.

The original plan had been to implement a small-scale SDLC structure:

The idea was surprisingly enterprise-grade for a hobby website.

In reality, only the /prod environment was ever used. Most development happened directly in production.

This discovery explained why Wayback continued referencing /prod years later.

The Most Important Discovery: g2data Survived

Among all the findings, one stood above the rest.

The original g2data directory still exists.

This is significant because Gallery2 stored its image assets there.

Even if:

• Drupal fails,
• Gallery2 fails,
• modules become unavailable,

the photographs themselves remain preserved.

For a miniature-painting community site, the images represent the most valuable and irreplaceable content.

Gallery2 Was Not Dead

Attempts were made to resurrect Gallery2 using:

• PHP 5.6
• MariaDB 5.5

Results were surprisingly positive.

Gallery2:

• authenticated users,
• displayed the gallery homepage,
• displayed user gallery thumbnails,
• initiated upgrade procedures.

Some images and links were broken, but the system clearly still recognized:

• its database,
• its users,
• its albums,
• portions of its content.

The conclusion was encouraging:

Gallery2 is not dead. It is merely wounded.

The Database Revelation

Another breakthrough came when examining the database.

Rather than using a separate Gallery2 database, the site contained:

in the same MySQL database.

This means the gallery metadata likely survives along with the images.

Potentially recoverable information includes:

• album structure
• image captions
• descriptions
• upload dates
• user relationships

Combined with the g2data directory, this dramatically improves recovery prospects.

The Shift to Entity-Oriented Design

The discussion gradually shifted away from migration and toward information architecture.

A key realization emerged:

Gallery2 organized content like this:

But hobby data doesn't naturally fit into hierarchical albums.

A miniature can simultaneously belong to:

• a manufacturer,
• a range,
• a painter,
• a sculptor,
• a game system,
• a genre.

This led to the adoption of an entity-oriented content model.

Building Cheddar2

The proposed successor, Cheddar2, would focus on relationships rather than albums.

Core entities include:

Supporting taxonomies include:

A particularly elegant concept involved the Role taxonomy:

The same Role vocabulary can apply to both:

• real people,
• fictional characters,
• miniature subjects.

People as a First-Class Entity

The first new content type created was:

Person

This allows representation of:

• painters,
• sculptors,
• photographers,
• authors,
• community members.

Rather than treating people as simple tags, they become fully referenceable entities.

Examples include:

This provides a foundation for rich relationships throughout the site.

The Core Lesson

Perhaps the most important lesson from the investigation was this:

Build the framework first. Then migrate the data.

Rather than modifying the new design to match Gallery2's historical limitations, the recommendation is:

1. Design the ideal entity model.
2. Create the entities and relationships.
3. Map the historical data into that structure.

The old data should inform the framework.

The old data should not dictate the framework.

Current Recommendation

Preservation Sources

The current recovery assets are remarkably complete:

✅ Drupal 7 backup

✅ Gallery2 tables

✅ g2data directory

✅ Gallery2 code

✅ Gallery3 test installation

✅ Wayback Machine captures

✅ Historical blog posts

✅ Original site creator available for consultation

Recovery Strategy

The goal is no longer simply upgrading Drupal.

The goal is preserving two decades of community history while creating a sustainable platform for the future.

Conclusion

What began as an upgrade project became something much larger.

The investigation revealed that Cheddarmongers is not merely a website. It is a historical archive of miniature gaming, painting, tutorials, photography, and community contributions spanning more than twenty years.

The encouraging news is that the evidence increasingly suggests the content survives:

• the databases survive,
• the images survive,
• Wayback captures survive,
• institutional knowledge survives.

The project has moved beyond recovery and into assessment and design.

The next chapter is not restoring Gallery2.

The next chapter is building Cheddar2—a modern, entity-oriented successor that preserves the past while remaining sustainable for the future.