I hesitate to even admit my stupidity, but if it saves even one poor slob like me from making the same mistake, it will be worth it.
I upgraded an existing site to DNN 4.5.5 and noticed that a lot of the modules in the list had updates available. So, wanting to be current and because the survey module was having problems, the fix for which was to upgrade to the latest version, I decided to upgrade. I simply downloaded the latest version of survey and tried to do an install. That caused the portal to crash. After a bit more research, I came across the comment that you had to remove old survey versions first. So, I did that and installed the upgrade and the module worked fine.
So, I figured, well, I guess the best way to do the upgrades would be to remove the old module first, then install the current version. THAT WAS A REALLY BAD DECISION. I methodically removed and upgraded virtually all the modules that had a green flag stating that an upgrade was available. What that did was remove all the content in each kind of module from all of the portals (parent and children) on the site.
You can imagine the surprise when I browsed to one of the sites and the whole page was BLANK. All of the content was missing. (There were a lot of text/html modules on the page, one of the modules I had upgraded!)
I don't know yet whether my host will be able to save me with a 'pre-upgrade' backup. If not, I guess I deserve it.
What's the difference between genius and stupidity?
Genius has limits.
jillymc
http://duhnetnuke4.net (an example of a virtually blank site, but with upgraded modules!!!)