Here is a quick upgrade tip that I found helpful and minimized possible headaches if errors occur when upgrading.
I would first recommend that you pull your PROD site locally first, including the database, and run a dry run test on the upgrade process following the steps in the Readme.txt file in the Documentation directory of the Upgrade files. This may eliminate any headaches in the PROD environment.
So here we go:
- Download the Upgrade DNN zip file and Extract files locally. (If you ran a local test you already did this…)
- Create a new directory on your PRODUCTION server, call it something like 'New_Release'
- Copy all the DNN files from your PROD DNN Directory to the new directory.
- Download your DNN web.config locally and compare it to the new version, make any necessary changes, (check out the Documentation folder Readme.txt file in the upgrade zip file.
- Place the new web.config file you just amended in the 'New_Release' folder on the PROD server
- Copy all New Upgrade file over the files in the 'New_Release' folder
- BACK UP THE DATABASE... Muy Importante!
- Rename your PROD DNN directory to something like 'BACKUP_DNN'
- Rename the 'New_Release' folder to the name of your PROD DNN directory name, the folder you just renamed.
- Browse to your PROD DNN and let the Upgrade process run...
If all went well with no errors you are good to go! Cruise your site to make sure everything is working properly. I have a redirect in the Root Directory of my site that sends visitors to the DNN Directory. You could temporarily redirect users to a temp "Currently Unavailable" page in the mean time while you run through and test thing out, this would be smart as well.
If you incurred some errors, you can simply restore the backed up database and switch the DNN directory names (old and new) back to the way they were and do your due diligence to figure out what went wrong.
This process eliminates a lot of ftp'ing and duplicate work with a quick fall back corrective action method that will save you time and headaches if something fails.
Now all that being said, I didn’t do this and the process went without a hitch, I am sort of psychotic like that sometimes; the DNN guys are good! But hind sight is 20/20 and with the volume of changes, you should always take extra precaution when, well, doing anything for that manner.
Hope this helps!
Ryan Anderson, MCSD