Upgrading a DotNetNuke Website

Here is a quick list of steps to upgrade a DNN website, this is by no means the only, or best way, but it is one approach. Feel free to tweak and add your own approach.

Before you perform an upgrade it might be helpful to check out the Common Upgrade Problems page.

(the following steps should work when upgrading from a version of DNN 4.6.2 or greater). If you are looking to upgrade from a DotNetNuke version 4.6.1 or older check out the instructions here.

Upgrade using App_offline.htm to disable

1. Backup your website files
2. Backup your database
3. Make sure you completed steps 1 and 2
4. Download the DotNetNuke_Community_XX.XX.XX.UPGRADE.zip package of the latest stable release of DotNetNuke.
5. Extract the contents of the UPGRADE package into a folder on your computer, it is not recommended that you extract directly over your website.
6. Add an app_offline.htm file to your website's root directory, this will disable the application from responding, which will prevent someone else from hitting your website during the time in which you are copying over the files (next steps)
7. Did you backup your website and database as mentioned in steps 1 and 2, if not, be sure to do that.
8. Copy the files from the extracted UPGRADE package over the contents of your website's folder.
9. Rename the app_offline.htm file to app_offline.htm.save
10. Access your website by browsing to it in a web browser, your site should being the upgrade process. If you don't do this quickly after renaming the app_offline.htm file it is possible that someone else might see the upgrade screen, if there's a problem with the upgrade you'll miss it in that case.

Upgrade by making a duplicate website based on a backup

1. Add an upgrade portal alias to your website ex: upgrade.dnndocs.net in addition to the normal www.dnndocs.net
2. Backup your website files
3. Backup your database
4. Make sure you completed steps 2 and 3
5. Download the DotNetNuke_Community_XX.XX.XX.UPGRADE.zip package of the latest stable release of DotNetNuke.
6. Restore the backed up website to a new folder path on your web server.
7. Configure IIS for a new website with a host header for upgrade.dnndocs.net
8. Setup Permissions on the file system
9. Restore the database to a NEW database name.
10. Modify the web.config of the new website to point to the new database
11. Extract the contents of the UPGRADE package into a folder on your computer, it is not recommended that you extract directly over your website.
12. Copy the files from the extracted UPGRADE package over the contents of your website's folder.
13. Access your new website by browsing to it in a web browser, your site should being the upgrade process. 
14. Once you have the upgraded website running you can modify your website settings in IIS to utilize the new website, rather than the non-upgraded website.

Upgrade by disabling all access to your website except local traffic

Coming soon

Upgrading from a version of DNN older than 4.6.2

To perform an upgrade from an older version of DNN than you should read the following information before using one of the processed outlined above.

1. ALWAYS BACKUP YOUR SITE FIRST!
2. You will not be using the UPGRADE package, you should start with the DNN INSTALL package.
3. You will need to make some changes to the web.config file that comes in the INSTALL package.
   1. You should make sure you copy the MachineKey settings, and both ConnectionStrings from the web.config file of the site you are going to upgrade.
   2. You will also need to copy any other customizations to the web.config file if you've made any.