I have a pretty decent sized 6.1.6 site (multi-lingual, a few thousand nodes and about ~3GB of data) that we are upgrading to 7.3.1 and would love some community advice! We have minimal plugins and custom user controls so not much worry about in regards to compatibility, but the update process seems daunting.
I think your first step would be to download an offline copy and give a straight upgrade a go. If it's pluginless and fairly vanilla it should just work.
I've not had the pleasure of using it but seen many people saying it's good!
Personally I'd never try to upgrade a live site. I'd plan a period of downtime, take the site off line and upgrade off line or on an alternative URL to avoid issues.
Personally I'd never try to upgrade a live site. I'd plan a period of downtime, take the site off line and upgrade off line or on an alternative URL to avoid issues.
My typical approach is to backup everything, restore locally, upgrade the local version, then after some testing restore that version back to the live site. That way, there is minimal downtime.
Of course, that requires that people stop editing in Umbraco in the meantime. And special considerations may apply if visitors of the site can alter the data in any way (e.g., if members can register on the site, that would alter the database). In those cases, I recommend disabling those bits of functionality during the upgrade process.
One point to note - ensure your on the same version of SQL Server locally or you can at least backup to a version that your server runs. Never quite trust the scripts!
Absolutely have backed everything up and have a new test VM setup for this. I did forget to mention that we use Courier and Contour, so I'll need to remove those and re-install once upgraded.
I'll try the direct upgrade first. I did manage to get the site into a package and 7.3.1 did accept most of it, but until I get the content in I won't be able to test that.
I'l post my processes here as I go, hopefully someone will find this thread useful! Thanks Nicholas and Steve
Upgrade advice requested!
I have a pretty decent sized 6.1.6 site (multi-lingual, a few thousand nodes and about ~3GB of data) that we are upgrading to 7.3.1 and would love some community advice! We have minimal plugins and custom user controls so not much worry about in regards to compatibility, but the update process seems daunting.
The two paths we are considering are the standard update processes here: https://our.umbraco.org/documentation/Getting-Started/Setup/Upgrading/version-specific but would this mean downloading each version mentioned here and updating to each one?
Alternatively we could start with a clean install and migrate the content and code somehow.
Does anyone have any advice they could give?
Thanks!
No, you just need to upgrade to the latest one.
I think your first step would be to download an offline copy and give a straight upgrade a go. If it's pluginless and fairly vanilla it should just work.
If you want to do a rebuild and migrate the package of the moment is http://soetemansoftware.nl/cmsimport
I've not had the pleasure of using it but seen many people saying it's good!
Personally I'd never try to upgrade a live site. I'd plan a period of downtime, take the site off line and upgrade off line or on an alternative URL to avoid issues.
My typical approach is to backup everything, restore locally, upgrade the local version, then after some testing restore that version back to the live site. That way, there is minimal downtime.
Of course, that requires that people stop editing in Umbraco in the meantime. And special considerations may apply if visitors of the site can alter the data in any way (e.g., if members can register on the site, that would alter the database). In those cases, I recommend disabling those bits of functionality during the upgrade process.
Quite agree Nicholas!
One point to note - ensure your on the same version of SQL Server locally or you can at least backup to a version that your server runs. Never quite trust the scripts!
Absolutely have backed everything up and have a new test VM setup for this. I did forget to mention that we use Courier and Contour, so I'll need to remove those and re-install once upgraded.
I'll try the direct upgrade first. I did manage to get the site into a package and 7.3.1 did accept most of it, but until I get the content in I won't be able to test that.
I'l post my processes here as I go, hopefully someone will find this thread useful! Thanks Nicholas and Steve
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