This page used to document my experiences upgrading between the itermittently released beta versions of umbraco. With the announcement of umbraco 4 Release Candidate, this page will be edited to a more general upgrade / update umbarco discussion.
When upgrading umbraco, you can examine the sql script for the database from the source code to see if there have been changes made that would require updates to your database. Look at the end of the file located in umbraco%204.0\umbraco\datalayer\SqlHelpers\SqlServer\Sql for new changes. In my experience these changes are rare enough that one can perform them on their own database by hand, and not go through all the installation steps of a typical fresh umbraco site, and the web.config editing that that entails.
When upgrading, these are the key folders to copy:
- bin
- config (with edits to umbracoSettings preserved)
- install (with modified detect.ascx to show upgrade button)
- umbraco
- umbraco_client
After ftping these folders to the site, I go into my hosting control panel and re-assert the permissions on those folders, cascading to children. This may not be strictly necessary, but it may prevent some pretty inexplicable behavior problems that can be caused by security issues, so I make sure that's all squared away.
The release candidate, along with the previous couple takes on the Beta of umbraco 4, has become very stable and robust. There isn't much else to an upgrade (Between versions of 4 only). Certainly, you may want to back up your database and files before attempting it, though.
I've completed the upgrade. I did end up going through the install steps again, because the new config-status value is 4.0.0.RC. While the config had the previous value, 4.0.0, I was getting some strange error messages, but editing the config to reset the status, then going through the install steps, upgrading, not re-installing my DB, and finally, re-editing the config file to reflect the new RC. All that is beccause of certain limited permissions or security on my config file that others may not experience.
All in all, smooth upgrade. My content is still here, which is what matters to me!
NOTE: I did have to republish the site and go directly to /umbraco/umbraco.aspx to sign in in order to get around some initial errors.
