I am preparing for upgrading my existing DNN installation from v4.3.5 to v4.4.1. Reading some threads on the main DNN website's forum it appears that some 'regulars' / 'old hands' when upgrading to a new version choose to do a clean install and not an upgrade. Is this the recommended route to take? I assume this route will involve a few extra steps including:

• Reimporting all 3rd party modules & Skins
  
• Reapplying skins to pages

Are there any other steps necessary for a 'clean' install route compared to an upgrade that I am missing above? Anybody have any experience / advice between the clean install and upgrade option? This info would be very helpful me establish what route would be best for me.

Thanks

Eoghano

hello,

If your current installation of DNN is working correctly you should be able to upgrade without any problems.

Instances when you may wish to do a clean install are when your current DNN installation has problems. For example, I currently want to upgrade DNN creative,  I have problems with the file manager (version 3.2 .2), so I will need to do a fresh installation in order to upgrade.

The main headache that you will have when doing a clean install is transferring across all of the data from your previous installation. This is something I am currently working on for DNN creative and becomes more complex dependent on the modules and size of your website.

Thanks,

Hi Lee,
How are your going to handle replacing the forums?

Although I have suggested this issue to Will at Active forums, I have not seen a complete solution to a complete export.

He had written 2 parts of a 3 part guide on how to perform a export. To my knowledge, the third part of the article was never published.

Also, to date, there is no export procedure to Ventrian's NewsArticle module. Due to the complexity of multiple categories.

Food for thought.

Hi Buck,

The upgrade on DNN C is now complete and it's running all the latest modules.

Will did write the last part of that article and it's worth a read in his blog. - As it happened i managed to put together a method of upgrading without a clean install that actually fixed the corrupted installation. - As you mention, I was having problems transferring across the data in a fresh install so had to follow the upgrade method.

Cheers,