Thank you Cathal and Sebastian for your posts and links. However you are actually re-enforcing my original point, and that there isn't a formal "How to upgrade" page, but only pieces of information scattered throughout the site. The reason I am asking for this is because it is not obvious to new users for one, and for more experienced users there is no "standard process" for us to compare all of the different blog entries and forum posts that we sift through before we start an upgrade to know what we should be expecting.
For example this post I found useful: http://www.dnndaily.com/tips/itemId/3... because it let me know that if I am upgrading from 4.6.2 or later I can use the automated feature. I was not able to find this information confirmed on the DNN site.
I just upgraded a site from 4.8 to 5.2.2 and thanfully used a staging server as I ran into this problem:
http://www.bestwebsites.co.nz/dotnetnuke/solving-the-dotnetnuke-redirect-loop/ . But at least I have found some information here on the forum ( I believe it was from Sebastian) explaining not to upgrade directly from 4.8 to 5.2.2 and go to 4.9 first. These type of upgrade paths are listed here: http://www.willstrohl.com/Blog/tabid/... but it would be great if they were officially listed on the DNN site, with a list of common problems that have been found in each (simple so we know what to look out for)
There are lots of experts like yourselves that answer these questions one by one, which we appreciate, but it would be great if some of that information was placed on a page that was DIRECTLY linked to the upgrade downloaded page, so that we could have these initial answers at hand. You would stop running around answering a lot of repeated questions one by one, and we would stop searching the site over and over just to double check that we are upgrading the correct way.
Hopefully some higher ups at DNN read this request and a link to an official "How to Upgrade" page is posted right on the download page itself at some time in the near future.
Please post your thoughts if you agree with this so they know people really are interested and are looking for a page like this.
Thanks