Just a crazy idea for "How to make it easier to upgrade Umbraco in the future" Not sure if it's possible, but here goes:
The downloaded Umbraco package you has one folder called example "Upgrade" when unzipped where all the files is located. On that way an upgrade is not overwriting your existing files. The only thing you do is upload the folder to your existing Umbraco website (or let Umbraco do it automatically).
Umbraco keeps looking after a folder called "Upgrade", and if it exist, it will ask the Administrator to get ready for an upgrade in Umbraco CMS. When the click okay, Umbraco CMS will close down and the upgrade procedure will start.
When the upgrade starts, Umbraco checks the files and make a list of the files that will be changed to the Administrator. Umbraco could maybe even gives the Administrator the possibility to see a file diff and implement the existing informations manually directly in the Upgrade procedure. All the settings that is standard from Umbraco in web.config and the other files could also be moved over to the upgraded version automatically. Of course only the lines that Umbraco CMS knows from start.
If 3. is not possible, could it be made so it will generate a log/overview of the files that will be changed, so you are more aware of the files changed and have the information afterwards? In that way, even if you overwrite existing files, you still have the old information located in this log/file archive.
Next step is that Umbraco begins to install and place all the new files in the respective directories. A log would be nice here as well, only if anything goes wrong.
Under the upgrade a folder called "Old Umbraco version" will be created, with all the files that get's changed. After the upgrade is done, the folder will either stay as if, or get compressed. If you forget to delete this when the next upgrade is available and installed, the old content in the directory will be deleted.
After the upgrade, the folder "Upgrade" will be deleted, and maybe Umbraco HQ will get a status in their statistic saying if this upgrade was a succes or a failure (maybe with some more info to tweak the upgrade process even more).
On that way you can actually use the information shown in Umbraco telling "A new Umbraco version is available". And place some extra text saying "Upgrade Now", that will upgrade right away.
Hope someone at HQ finds this possible. I think something like this could help lift the upgrade procedure to another (and eaiser) level.
Thanks for the input Niels! I've been working on something like this recently and it will first appear in Umbraco as a Service where we'll have total control over the environment that Umbraco is running in. We can take the learnings from there and do something similar for the general upgrade process.
After the updates placed in Umbraco 7, the "weakest link" is actually the upgrade part in my point of view. So really awesome to hear you are doing some magic there :)
Just for my curiousity, is it very difficult to make the above scenario or have you solved/do you solve it another way?
PS. Be aware that launch date on Umbraco as a Service is set to november 2013: http://umbraco.com/future.aspx, just if you want to updated the date here
Upgrade installation idea for future Umbraco 7's and beyond
Hi everybody,
Just a crazy idea for "How to make it easier to upgrade Umbraco in the future" Not sure if it's possible, but here goes:
On that way you can actually use the information shown in Umbraco telling "A new Umbraco version is available". And place some extra text saying "Upgrade Now", that will upgrade right away.
Hope someone at HQ finds this possible. I think something like this could help lift the upgrade procedure to another (and eaiser) level.
Kind regards,
Niels
Thanks for the input Niels! I've been working on something like this recently and it will first appear in Umbraco as a Service where we'll have total control over the environment that Umbraco is running in. We can take the learnings from there and do something similar for the general upgrade process.
Hi Sebastiaan,
That sounds really good :)
After the updates placed in Umbraco 7, the "weakest link" is actually the upgrade part in my point of view. So really awesome to hear you are doing some magic there :)
Just for my curiousity, is it very difficult to make the above scenario or have you solved/do you solve it another way?
PS. Be aware that launch date on Umbraco as a Service is set to november 2013: http://umbraco.com/future.aspx, just if you want to updated the date here
Kind regards,
Niels
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