Ok, I have been looking and yes I find no way to easily do this but with all of the upgrade questions and issues I have seen all through the forum, it begs the question to be asked ...

Is there a way for a person to perform a clean install of DotNetNuke, install all of their modules (core, purchased and self-developed), install all of the skins and containers, and then import their content in? Is there a third-party tool to assist this?

I ask because I am having one hell of a time trying to get through an upgrade from 4.9.4 to 5.5.1. I will also say that my instance of DNN started in the 2.1.02 code base and I have upgraded since then. I do thank Bill Severance for his great update guide (http://www.dotnetnuke.com/Community/Forums/tabid/795/forumid/200/threadid/387633/scope/posts/Default.aspx) but there is still clean-up that I have to do on my installation to really get it running smooth. A clean install and import of data would make me feel better going forward, much like I do when I rebuild my Windows boxes. I also say this because I have another customer where they are hosting their own DNN and I have installed it fresh. The upgrades do not do DNN justice compared to a clean install.

I know I should have been better about performing upgrades and I do akin my task similar to a user of Windows 2000 Server going to 2008. (I would have said R2 but there would never be an upgrade path to R2 as 32-bit is not supported on R2.) I am upgrading all of my systems for the right reasons, to protect my customers' data and secure my systems.

Am I alone in these feelings? I could be and I will march forward to complete the task at hand.

Thanks,
Jared

Jared Shockley
http://empowersmallbusiness.com/