I've looked in the forums and the blogs but haven't seen anyone discuss a best practice for handling upgrades that involve multiple versions.

I'm dealing with major issues with a straight 4.3.4 to 4.8.4 upgrade right now.  I've done single upgrade before without any "major" problems, but this got me thinking...is this the best way of handling this situation?  If not, what is?  Upgrading to the highest rev for the next minor release?  Going rev to rev?

Just to make sure this is clear, here's a partial list of versions based on the SourceForge repository listing:

• 4.8.4
• 4.8.3
• 4.8.2
• 4.8.1
• 4.8.0
• 4.7.0
• 4.6.2
• 4.6.0
• 4.5.5
• 4.5.4
• 4.5.3
• 4.5.2
• 4.5.1
• ...

If one wanted to upgrade a installation of 4.5.1 to the most recent version, which would be best (read: most reliable) approach?

1. 4.5.1 to 4.8.4, or
2. 4.5.1 to 4.5.5 to 4.6.2 to 4.7.0 to 4.8.4, or
3. 4.5.1 to 4.5.2 to 4.5.3 to 4.5.4 to 4.6.0 to 4.6.2 to...well...you get the idea.

Thoughts?

Thanks Ian.

Backup the data and system...of course.  I already made the mistake of not doing that a few years ago.  Hard lessons learned.

I just read the Charles Nurses blog article that you provided and follow-ed up with Mitchel Sellers'.  Wow.  What a great improvement.

Are you suggesting that one use install packages to get to 4.6.0 rather than upgrade packages? 

Hopefully, those who are trying to get older versions of DNN "caught up" will benefit from this discussion.

Yep. That by no means is the only way to do it. But it is what I have done and will continue to do until I see a good reason to change my habits. I generally like to do things manually (just my preference) in cases like this, but with the xml merge stuff I'm comfortable not being in complete control ;)

Take care,

Ian