How bad is upgrade?

[rivertrish]

I know nothing about websites- nonetheless, I own and maintain one with the help of the Vivvo CMS.

I decided to upgrade my support in order to have access to widgets, etc... but that also allows me to upgrade my Vivvo product from 4.0.3.

How bad is it to upgrade? I am using template 4021 and have made many changes to my default pages, templates, added plug-ins, etc. If I install the upgrade, how much of that will I have to re-do? (If I can even remember what I've already done).

I'm nervous about this and would appreciate any feedback. This has been an enormously huge learning curve for me and I have limited time I can devote to my website... I can't afford for it to be down a long time while I try to fix things from an upgrade.

Thanks for any advice you can offer.

Trish

[rivertrish]

I realized my question was a little broad and I should probably be more specific.

1. Do I have to install every upgrade and patch all the way from 4.0.3 to 4.1.5?

2. The manual says Vivvo has a script to help with the upgrade, but because I'm not using the default template/theme, does that mean I have to go in and upgrade every single template file I've modified?

3. This forum suggests there are lots of problems with upgrades, some of which were answered here and some of which were not. On some of those answered, because of my ignorance, I don't understand the answer given. Is this forum representative of problems? (or, do most people NOT have a problem with upgrades, or does almost everyone have some kind of problem that will need to be fixed?)

4. Do all my plug-ins also have to be upgraded?

5. When I've added widgets/etc, will those also have to be upgraded in some way?

I need to get an idea of the workload/expense involved in the upgrade, so I appreciate any feedback.

[millkins]

1. Yes you do. Read more about it here: http://www.vivvo.net/forums/showthread.php?t=6230&highlight=upgrade+4.0.3

2. You need to follow the instructions given here:
http://www.vivvo.net/doc/41/upgrade_.../templates.htm
http://www.vivvo.net/doc/41/upgrade_manual/themes.htm
For every version there are some files that need modifying, and you can find the instructions in the readme file inside each of em.

3. If you do every operation in it's order you wont be having any trouble at all.

4 and 5. Yes they would.

If you want the Vivvo Team to make the upgrade instead, please contact the support center by submitting a ticket.

[rivertrish]

I assumed those were the answers, but I've learned that when I assume, I can quite often be wrong. ;0)

I appreciate the instruction files... I think I already had all those but it's nice to know that I have what I need.

I talked with my tech guy this morning about what I'm doing so he's prepared to help with the things I really don't understand at all (modifying htaccess and chmod permissions... and people think lawyers have a whole different language!) and I'm going to slowly work my way through it - I'm a learn by doing kind of gal, so I'm going to give it a try, knowing that I have back up (and backups!) if I mess it up.

Thanks again for your help

[rivertrish]

Am I going to have to repurchase it, or is there an upgrade available. When I look on the resources page, it seems that 'add to cart' is the only option available. :0(

[millkins]

I think you were looking at a wrong page. Everything you have ever purchased id on your client area. Where all the upgrade versions are. So, if you have purchased this plugin the Plug-in Banner Manager Upgrade script from Vivvo 4.0.x is packed there since Vivvo released them. So there is really no need to pay for anything twice :D

[rivertrish]

Thanks for the great news on Banner Manager.

I have made my way through 4.1.2 std (actually, those files are being overwritten now) without any major glitches, although my server crashed right after the first patch which turned out to be a pure coincidence and not due to anything I'd done!

Because I use template 4021 I am making the manual changes to all template files (time consuming) but I'm wondering about those few files where it says "completely replace file." I'm assuming if I replace the file with the one provided, it will not match the template I'm using.

Any ideas what I should do about that? Does it matter?

[millkins]

Well the safest way would certainly be to replace the whole file and then see how it looks, and maybe fix it a little, rather than your site being dysfunctional. I would recommend you to firstly finish the upgrade of Vivvo and all templates and css files and if you manage that right than see if everything works. Then make it pretty, and look the way it already did :) (less time consumed).