WebDBApps Has an Upgraded Engine!
Jun
23
Written by:
6/23/2010 9:20 AM
I try to strike a careful balance between staying on the bleeding edge of technology and waiting for new feature sets to be implemented, tested and improved before applying them here. I was installing DotNetNuke 5.4.2 on a client's dedicated server last week and had a thought: Does WebDBApps need to be upgraded to the current version of DotNetNuke?
Survey Says: Yes! We were running version 5.1.4.
Our hosting provider allowed us to move to an IIS7 server so that we could offer clients the ability to leverage the features that play especially well such as ASP.NET 4.0 and MVC2. So, since I was in upgrade mode, I downloaded all the DNN upgrades up to 5.4.2. My first attempt failed miserably, and here's some advice to those of you looking to follow the same process:
- Always backup your SQL Server database and website files!!! Never upgrade DNN until this is accomplished.
- Ensure that read and write permissions are granted to your entire wwwroot directory. This really tripped me up. Using DotNetPanel, I set write permission at wwwroot, but didn't check the box to apply to all child directories. Ouch!!
- Ensure that web.config has read and write permissions, even after doing step 2 above. DNN upgrades modify web.config and such upgrades will fail unless permissions are set correctly.
- After downloading the upgrade version of DNN, right click the zip file and select Unblock. Then, upload to your web server. I chose to stage the zip files in a separate directory, moving them to wwwroot as the upgrade progressed.
- When you unzip the contents of the upgrade file, go to your DNN site and carefully read the upgrade progress. Green Success is Good! If you have any failed steps, DO NOT continue upgrading to the next version. Review Event Viewer from Host login and research as needed via DNN forums. If you still cannot resolve, restore your site and database from the backups made in step 1.
- You might optionally check for new extensions via the Host login after everything is completed. Be sure to upgrade only those extensions used in your portals.
- Create fresh backups of your database and website for safekeeping!
I hope the above advice helps others in their efforts to apply upgrades successfully. If you find my words of wisdom useful, please share a comment here.
Happy Coding!