Upgrading DNN Site

  There are really two DNN upgrade paths.  The first and easiest is when the upgrade goes with a hitch.  The second case is nasty and seems to be very common with DNN.  The second case is when the upgrade fails to produce a working site.

  The second case essentially destroys your site and database rendering them useless.  The only way to upgrade DNN sites safely is to make backups of your site folders and the DNN database.

   Upgrade failing can occur in a three ways I have seen. The first is that the upgrade process itself fails at some percentage leaving both the site folders and database in some kind of halfway state between versions (ex: permission issue on the site folder).  The second way is that the upgrade completes, but the site cannot be loaded with some sort of DNN error (example :  Parameter count error on site load, but where or what was failing was not logged anywhere).  The third upgrade failure is when you upgrade the site, but there are some critical flaws or oddness preventing the site from working properly (ex: admin/host menus do not work or are not accessible or modifiable).

   The first case is usually a permission issue, if the IIS /Network user or whatever DNN needs is not working, logon to the server as an admin, and then try running the upgrade. Second case is most insidious and the hardest to fix (read "very difficult" since there is no logging of the error anywhere I could find.).  Third one may not work out, but by googling the issues you may be able to work out the issues step by step.  However you may find that some modules simply do not work under the new DNN version.

   Worst case is where you have to rebuild the site.  Personally I found that upgrading across large version differences will increase the likelihood that you will need to do a rebuild instead of an upgrade.  Some people seem to recommend that you upgrade multiple times in small version steps to get to the most recent one.  However I have not had luck with that process.

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