I am an end user and we are having problems with our site crashing.
We have an old version Umbraco v6.1.6 and was told by a consultant that upgrading to the latest version may fix the issue. May...
I am not a technical user, just an enduser.
I wanted to get some idea of the time involved in making the upgrade (once I find someone to take over our account)
My question is: what is the process for upgrading? One upgrade at a time?
What would be a reasonable amount of time for this process?
We are linked to CRM Dynamcis, checking the links would be a different issue?
Thank you for your assistance.
It all depends on the reason why your site is crashing, an Umbraco consultant should be able to investigate and get a good idea of why the issue is occurring.
You may not need to upgrade if the issue is a server related problem for example, or an issue with some corrupt content or fragmented database etc.
There are a number of fixes though in the 6 series of Umbraco addressing performance issues, so upgrading to 6.2.6 the last release in the Umbraco 6 series will rule out some known issues with performance - for example the Issue 'U4-6292 CPU Keeps Getting Pegged Every Few Hours '(http://issues.umbraco.org/issue/U4-6292) was resolved in this release.
So there is some truth in saying that upgrading to this version may resolve your issues, even without investigating them, if it turns out the issue is one fixed in a later release.
The complexity of Upgrading an Umbraco site depends on the number of non core plugins and packages you have, and the target version you are aiming to upgrade to.
There is a fundamental difference between Umbraco 6 and Umbraco 7 in terms of how the backoffice works, and most plugins for Umbraco 6 will not work and have not all have direct Umbraco 7 equivalents. Upgrading to Umbraco 7 is much more involved in terms of complexity (but this is sugared by all the great work Umbraco has put in to improving the upgrade process generally throughout the 7 series) - you may have to choose or develop new property editors and migrate existing data to the new format.
Essentially with any Upgrade, nobody can really tell you how long it will take / cost without having a good nosey at your existing site. After a day or so of investigation, you would then be able to get a pretty good idea of the total effort involved.
It can take a few weeks for anyone to get to grips with a new clients site, start to understand it, get to the bottom of issues, and bring some stability to the situation.
One tip when engaging someone is to work to metrics, eg the Site is crashing 16 times a week, and has page response of x seconds, we need this to not crash, and reduce page response to y seconds, then if you keep track of the metrics as you work with a consultant, you can see whether or not your site is improving under their direction.
Thank you very much for your reply. It gave me enough information, so I can compare it to the other recommendation,
I am not sure that we have many packages, but we do have some non-core plugins and of course all the coding to link to CRM Dynamics.
The later versions looked like they had some features I might use as the end user, but I am not sure if it would be worth the development time to get there.
The site was working until April when it started to crash. The 3 years before that it was stable.
Thank you again for taking the time to answer me. I appreciate it.
Thank you for taking the time to reply.
The CRM coding links have been checked by a CRM Specialist and they are now working. I no longer get errors when someone registers or enters other purchases/info.
I have server errors several times a day, but it does not usually crash the site.
Upgrade from Umbraco v6.1.6 to latest version
I am an end user and we are having problems with our site crashing. We have an old version Umbraco v6.1.6 and was told by a consultant that upgrading to the latest version may fix the issue. May... I am not a technical user, just an enduser. I wanted to get some idea of the time involved in making the upgrade (once I find someone to take over our account)
My question is: what is the process for upgrading? One upgrade at a time? What would be a reasonable amount of time for this process? We are linked to CRM Dynamcis, checking the links would be a different issue? Thank you for your assistance.
Hi EndUser61
It all depends on the reason why your site is crashing, an Umbraco consultant should be able to investigate and get a good idea of why the issue is occurring.
You may not need to upgrade if the issue is a server related problem for example, or an issue with some corrupt content or fragmented database etc.
There are a number of fixes though in the 6 series of Umbraco addressing performance issues, so upgrading to 6.2.6 the last release in the Umbraco 6 series will rule out some known issues with performance - for example the Issue 'U4-6292 CPU Keeps Getting Pegged Every Few Hours '(http://issues.umbraco.org/issue/U4-6292) was resolved in this release.
So there is some truth in saying that upgrading to this version may resolve your issues, even without investigating them, if it turns out the issue is one fixed in a later release.
The complexity of Upgrading an Umbraco site depends on the number of non core plugins and packages you have, and the target version you are aiming to upgrade to.
There is a fundamental difference between Umbraco 6 and Umbraco 7 in terms of how the backoffice works, and most plugins for Umbraco 6 will not work and have not all have direct Umbraco 7 equivalents. Upgrading to Umbraco 7 is much more involved in terms of complexity (but this is sugared by all the great work Umbraco has put in to improving the upgrade process generally throughout the 7 series) - you may have to choose or develop new property editors and migrate existing data to the new format.
Essentially with any Upgrade, nobody can really tell you how long it will take / cost without having a good nosey at your existing site. After a day or so of investigation, you would then be able to get a pretty good idea of the total effort involved.
It can take a few weeks for anyone to get to grips with a new clients site, start to understand it, get to the bottom of issues, and bring some stability to the situation.
One tip when engaging someone is to work to metrics, eg the Site is crashing 16 times a week, and has page response of x seconds, we need this to not crash, and reduce page response to y seconds, then if you keep track of the metrics as you work with a consultant, you can see whether or not your site is improving under their direction.
regards
Marc
Thank you very much for your reply. It gave me enough information, so I can compare it to the other recommendation, I am not sure that we have many packages, but we do have some non-core plugins and of course all the coding to link to CRM Dynamics. The later versions looked like they had some features I might use as the end user, but I am not sure if it would be worth the development time to get there. The site was working until April when it started to crash. The 3 years before that it was stable.
Thank you again for taking the time to answer me. I appreciate it.
HI EndUser61
It does sound like either an issue that has built up over time or a windows update on the server that has introduced an incompatibility issue.
(The key to any upgrade will be how the integration to CRM Dynamics has been put together!)
Good luck!
regards
Marc
Thank you for taking the time to reply. The CRM coding links have been checked by a CRM Specialist and they are now working. I no longer get errors when someone registers or enters other purchases/info. I have server errors several times a day, but it does not usually crash the site.
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