Loading...
 
Skip to main content

Architecture / Installation

Forum List Topic List

Forums » Architecture / Installation » Best strategy to upgrade Tiki from 14.2 to 18.3
 
Thread actions
Print this page
  • Print all pages

    • Best strategy to upgrade Tiki from 14.2 to 18.3

    Posted by ManelFN posts: 38 Germany

    Dear all,
    we use Tiki as an intranet portal in our company. For several reasons we didn't upgrade Tiki. Now we would like to upgrade Tiki to the last LTS version.

    We have perfomed some changes in the code and have a theme.

    My problem are the changes we have done on the database. Some tables are new and in other tables some columns were added.

    How could we proceed?

    Would be it helpful to follow the upgrade path 14.2 > 15.x > 18.3 ?
    Or even better from 14.2 to 18.3 directly?

    What is the best way to migrate the current database data (with the added colums) to the new one ?

    Thanks for you help,
    Manel

    Reads: 1780
    Posted by John Morris posts: 758 United States

    Manel, I am going to point out obvious points for your case, and I hope they help, I am not a dev, but I am looking at some of your questions and coming from my own experience with my answers, I hope they help.

    Firstly, I would create a copy of your tiki, and use it to upgrade with first, before you upgrade directly to your live tiki. Since this is a company tiki we are talking about, a week or a month to make this happen in my opinion would be worth the effort. Even if you have to purchase a new domain for testing purposes only, and copy your live tiki to that domain, and then perform your upgrades. You could test it both ways, 14 - 15 - 18 and then perform the upgrade straight to 18. And see how it reacts.

    As far as migrating your db tables and the added ones, if I am not mistaking tiki upgrades your existing db, and should not alter your existing added tables.

    The theme, is your theme completely custom? Or is it modified from the native boot themes?

    One thing I am certain of, is make a copy of your tiki, and experiment with upgrading the copy, and analyze how it reacts to the new changes. And if anything is out of place, you'll be able to address those issues in your copy, make note of them, and for your final upgrade, you'll know what is coming.

    And I am sure you have backups galore since it's your company tiki right? Obviously back up before you do your final upgrade. I know you knew that.

    Hope this helped just a little.

    Posted by ManelFN posts: 38 Germany

    Thank you John,
    we are in an intial phase, estimating if the upgrade is worth for us.

    The templates are modifications from the native templates.

    I'll share the experience if we decide to upgrade Tiki.

    Best regards,
    Manel


    Posted by John Morris posts: 758 United States

    I would say the upgrade would be worth it, as the 14.x version you are using was only a mid level release, it's not even LTS, you should at least upgrade to 15.x LTS to protect yourselves from bugs and security weaknesses.
    The 15.x LTS should be an easy upgrade from the 14

    Good luck Manel


    Posted by Bernard Sfez / Tiki Specialist posts: 8654 France

    Hello Manel,

    About software upgrades in general and Tiki.
    It depends of how far you’ve been in customising on your side and what was changed from version to version.

    Your Tiki14.x is a pre LTS and you should already jump to version 15 for safety.
    It seems that shouldn’t be a big jump : https://doc.tiki.org/tiki15. Check your PHP version. 😉
    With that you’ll be on the safe side till 2021.

    A jump to Tiki18 is a bigger one but with many many improvements and advantages. To review them you have to check:
    https://doc.tiki.org/tiki16
    https://doc.tiki.org/tiki17
    and of course https://doc.tiki.org/tiki18

    In my mind once you’ve done the Tiki15 and everything is ok and fresh in your mind (like the list of customised files) you should go for Tiki18... So many fixes, so many improvements...

    You can get available version from here: https://tiki.org/Download

    Stay online and tell us. 😊