This process has been in place since Version 4.6.2, but it's not gotten a lot of attention until this week.

One of the more tedious parts of a DotNetNuke upgrade has been the requirement to upgrade the web.config file manually.  Here's the good news:  YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO THIS ANYMORE (if you are upgrading from a 4.6.2 or later site.)

Just USE THE UPGRADE package, unzip it over your existing installation, and then browse to the site to upgrade.  In my case, I always set autoupgrade=false in web.config.  So, I have to browse to /Install/install.aspx to force the upgrade to trigger.

I just upgraded a 4.7.0 site to 4.8.3 this way and things went well.

And, always back up your database and web directory before upgrading ... just in case something fails.