• I've seen a number of comments implying that an upgrade utility might be valuable for the "less technical". I agree with that. I shake my head when I see references to web.config, modules, config files, etc - what must the less technical think when they see that. However, I'd like to point out that an upgrade utility is every bit as useful for the more technically proficient. For example, I consider myself quite technical. I've used ASP.Net since 1.0 (anyone remember Visual Interdev? :)), have a web site build on server-side functionality using C#, pretty comfortable with SQL Server, etc, etc. But what I DON'T do is play with DNN "just for the heck of it". IN contrast to the "upgrades are easy" crowd, I change DNN configuration only when I need to do so not on a regular basis. An upgrade utility can embed DNN-specific knowledge of the upgrade "environment" and free me from having to worry about that. That's beneficial regardless of whether I CAN understand these concepts - I don't want to have to understand them!
• An interesting side story. I previously purchased and used Telligent Community Server. What a nightmare from an upgrade perspective! Yes, it was pretty rich functionally but what really, really caught my attention - in a very negative way - was the manual and fragile set of steps necessary with every upgrade. I have no idea whether Telligent eventually saw the light - but I can say without qualification that the lack of a robust, mature upgrade tool/process was a direct and primary reason I dumped that platform. Oh - and by the way - I had a support contract there and was regular told "Hey, this is easy - just copy these files, play with this config file, etc, etc". I truly hope someone at DNN can step back a little. This last week has taken me from a very strong supporter to someone who will continue to use DNN - but is jaded and is now open to the idea of alternatives. All for the sake of an upgrade tool.
• That said, I do "care" about DNN. But I see a significant indifference to there being a problem here - which, as a paying customer, is not good at all.

Joe (Binkman), I truly appreciate you chiming into the thread. Given all you have read here, the technical issues a few of us have faced, the "voice of the customer" (I guess we're complaining that manual upgrades are not good enough) and the fact that your own support professional (and a very qualified one) took 1 1/4 hours to figure out my problem, I'd be interested if there are any alarm bells going off here. Or is the impression that it's still easy (which, frankly, comes across as an implication that I'm the problem not the software :)).

Thanks for listening.

Mark