I have about 10 Catalook stores I'm building at the moment - taken from a single build which I thought I'd use the 'templates' but couldn't until I found how to work around the 'not valid file' solution. And by then I'd already spent the 2 days putting these babies online.. since I used the 'attach' method with renaming the db, and it all gets a little tedious if you ask me. (fortunately however, in that process I found how much easier it was to deploy sites using the xml method with IIS6.. but that's another day)

So, I've got a site I setup a while ago - it was a 4.3.4 site upgraded to 4.3.4 and running the 5.0.3 version of catalook.. and how well we learn these numbers now since when you're talking with people, and they have different requirements, you get to pick the type of build you need, does it need this gateway or that one, will the client finally get me the images I've been waiting for before DNN 5 comes out...eg.. before 2008.

And so I thought what better site to see if I kill off, than a hardly used DNN build. And I wanted to test it on something real - I find that just doing updates with no real site functionality doesn't always give true readings.. just like the scenario of forced 'disk' caching - you might think it's a great idea, but I have a machine with 8gb of ram and it's tailored to run using memory!!! So Monday I had the 'real world experience' of DNN 4.4.1 with the default settings changed. It was horrible.

Now, back on track here - I thought I'd give it a go and upgrade the site to 4.4.1 but how to go about it... and I can honestly say guys - if you don't have access to your own server, can't log on as host to manipulate the site quickly I feel for you - and I thought to myself if I had to run DNN on a hosted environment - I'd almost be seriously considering 2 urls, and a dev build I could switch over and make live after I'd upgraded it.

What makes it doubly challenging is that there are a myriad of hosting options, some have control panels, some don't. User experience comes into play as well. But this is how I did it..

Since we do full backups every night and I have 14 days SQL history of every site on the server, and because the site wasn't really used and I was prepared to lose it, I didn't bother backing it up but I would have should it have been anything else. So, what I did was to zip up the whole folder first, and copy the web.config file to a backup folder. (that meant I could refer to it quickly) I then unzipped the DNN 4.3.7 upgrade and the DNN 4.4.1 upgrade into the folder and of course renamed the 'release.config' to web.config in the upgrade folder. I tend to get the whole web.config and everything else working before copying and pasting the contents over the root folder.

I then look at the code and copy the whole section from the first line through to where the machine keys are - since they are required to make sure I can log back into the installation and alot of people miss it.

What is sometimes a little confusing to the eye is what happens to the 'web.config' layout when you're working on upgrading dnn sites because as the file gets written to, they tend to make one long line rather than the neat 2 - 3 lines that are in the original file. So getting your bearings on where things should sit sometimes takes a bit of working out because it is also easy to accidently miss one of the closing tags here and there - and you don't know until you've hit the refresh button on the site.

So, with a small amount of contempt and lack of care if it actually worked, I thought I'd do the upgrade from 4.3.4 to 4.3.7 first. And so, I also made sure the HREF exchanger code was in there.. I've had a bit of trouble here and there with the Href exhchanger, which makes me a bit nervous using it on future sites - I'm actually look at some other scenarios - one being the PageBlaster module which allows full flexiblity of page naming for optimising search engine friendly urls. It's not quite as 'automated' as the href exchanger, but it allows for more flexibility I think if you really want to get into the fine tuning.. but we'll see what happens.. it worked today - so that's all that matters.

I made sure I was logged out of the site, and then while on the server, copied the files from the upgrade folder and pasted it into the root directory and then from my PC browser, hit the refresh button and it went through the upgrade seamlessly and I was ready for the DNN 4.4.1 upgrade. I didn't bother logging in but I logged back onto the server, and then zipped the folder up again, and didn't bother about zipping up the db - since as I said - ready to trash it... and then went through the web.config updates again, taking the web.config file information from the freshly updated one and renaming the release.config file etc.. copying the files across and then hitting the refresh button again.

The second time I must have forgotten the closing tags on something - and it came up with an error - so I ended up copying line by line, watching carefully from the 'working one' to the new one and making sure that I hadn't missed anything.. the problem with remote off is you can't see the error unless logged in to the server via terminal services.

So, it actually worked and looked great, but when I went to log in from my PC - it came up with an error - which I felt must have been cookie or cache related, since I could log in from a web page on the server, but not from my local PC, and and so I logged in and cleared the cache.. And here's something else I did - I set the caching to 'memory' and commented out the compression line in the web.config file because I've seen what hell others are having - I have no desire to pioneer this area. After clearing the cache, I was able to log in from my local pc to the website, and I immediately went in and upgraded the Catalook version to the latest. Hit the clear cache again, and it's running well.

Now, what I really wish for was a list of the 'excact' files I need to upgrade because I sense the very challenges most 'hosted' people have is the file uploading, and the worry that people are going to try and visit the page. You almost need to take it offline to do efficiently.

Having said that I did think that if I was a hosted client (Not like my clients who I manage it all for them) but those who have hosting with control panels, I'd be using the zip to to folder and then the 'unzip' function if they had it. I think I saw one control panel that did. I would also invest in the backup module - I had it a few years ago - it was fantastic and it actually allows you now to zip up your DB and files in one.. that is fantastic.. but before getting sold on it - I suggest you emulate something locally so that you can at the very least - check that it works before running the risk of having a non workable site.

I would also seriously consider running a parallel site - so that you could have it switched over -if you have the entries in the portal alias table, you'll be able to switch from one site to another (this would also require having 2 db's) I don't know - I might be talking in some sort of crazed dream since I have the luxury of being able to log on to a webserver, but this is not the case for most others who are faced with a decision on upgrading.

Personally - I don't upgrade unless I need to - and if I have a site with content in it, running well, already commissioned, I'd not upgrade unless there was a security issue that forced me to. Having never really sucessfully upgraded many DNN sites that are what I call 'production' site and even my own XD site - well that won't be upgraded, but it will be on super build of DNN and I'm just starting to test the build at the moment.

So I guess I don't have answers, just sharing the 'experience' of a site I could care less losing, but uprading in two steps - one to the latest DNN 4.3 X build first - and then again, immediately to 4.4.1 and there I believe it's going to stay since it will be going live in next fortnight - but sharing with you how I did it, and also thinking out loud - that if I had the misfortune of having to have a 'hosted' site, and feeling the urge to upgrade, I'd really be putting in a 'dev' site to upgrade and test that runs in parallel to the live site - as there are so many files to upload and you don't want distractions.

And you can have an 'under construction' page on as well - if your site isn't overly busy and you dont' have links on google that pick up the urls.. I guess it might work, but not 100% convinced it's the answer.

The site seems to run pretty well - all the compression is removed - no pageblaster in it yet - but the latest build of Catalook and DNN seem to indicate that DNN is getting to be more mature.. which is good news for us all. The site seems to run pretty well - all the compression is removed - no pageblaster in it yet - but the latest build of Catalook and DNN seem to indicate that DNN is getting to be more mature.. which is good news for us all and isn't it simply ironic - this upgrade reminded me of gambling... don't do something unless you don't mind losing it.. and out of that - was a good result for once.. since I'm not a gambler at all and I never feel that lucky and yet it went smooth and runs like a rocket.

Cheers

Nina Meiers