Our DNNUpgrade module was designed to accelerate and automate your DNN (DotNetNuke) upgrades. This is important!: Even though, you do not simply upgrade your production site, even having a fresh full backup (which DNNUpgrade can also do for you, relaying on our DNNBackup module, which is the leading DNN Backup solution).
This is especially true when performing a major version upgrade (e.g. from version X to version Y), or a minor version upgrade (e.g. from X.A to X.B). Upgrading from X.Y.A to X.Y.B (revision upgrade) is usually not that critical. However, the time you decide to upgrade directly from X.Y.A to X.Y.B is when it fails (Murphy's law.), and you will notice it days later.
You should first test the upgrade in a clone/staging site. DNNBackup can help you to create (or update) a clone site. Testing whether an upgrade process was successful or not, is more than executing the DNN upgrade process and seeing it finishing without throwing any errors. You should run the upgraded site, and verify each extension - including modules and skins - currently in use. The Inventory tool included in DNNUpgrade (Tools > DNN Installation Inventory) can be a good starting point for this task (this is a FREE feature). Also, you should validate the site's 'Host', 'Admin' features, regular users’ functionality, and look for unexpected Event Log entries. The validation of the upgrade in the clone site could take many days, depending on your site’s size and complexity.
Bottom line: ALWAYS test the upgrade in a staging site before upgrading your production site.
In case you would like Evotiva to take care of the backup, cloning and upgrade of your DNN site, and you are not interested neither in regular backups of you upgraded DNN Installation nor performing future upgrades by yourself, there is no need for you to purchase DNNBackup, DNNUpgrade or any other tool. The Evotiva team will use their own toolset for the task, without charging any of their costs to you.
With all this said, meet
Our Upgrade Process - Create a full backup (database + files) of your DNN Installation.
- Clone the site (restore the backup that was created) in your staging site (if you have one – highly advised, for many reasons –), or in a temporary URL of our own.
- Perform the upgrade in the clone site.
Depending on the source and destination version of DNN, this could take many intermediate upgrades. Thankfully, DNNUpgrade makes this fast and easy.
Sometimes, upgrading the DNN Platform implies also the need to upgrade some extensions. This depends on each installation, the target DNN version, and which extensions are in use. For open source extensions, we take care of this without you even have to notice. For paid or custom extensions (modules, skins, providers, etc.), you are responsible of providing us the required upgrade package(s). It could happen that a suitable new version of an extension does not exist, and the upgrade should be aborted, or should be half-performed (which means, stop upgrading in a version previous to the one that was initially planned).
- Validate the upgraded clone site.
We can validate some basic and standard things related to the DNN installation. For example, login functionality (host, admin and regular users), new (not already present on the source site) unusual exceptions in the DNN’s Event Log and Log files, and obvious extensions or pages failures. This might need to be done in more than one portal, in case your DNN installation is holding many portals within it. The Inventory tool included in DNNUpgrade makes this basic validation easy.
It is very important that you validate the upgraded site, because you are the one who really knows about how your DNN site is expected to behave, especially when custom or not well known extensions are being utilized. This could take many days, depending on the DNN Installation size and complexity.
- Backup and Upgrade the production site.
- Validate the upgraded production site.
Due to the different possible scenarios related with your DNN upgrade requirements, we cannot publish a flat rate fee for this service. Please Contact Us for a quote.