Issue 22 was an awesome tutorial, the best yet I think, but I want to point out that transferring a live site to local site to test an upgrade, or new modules, etc, is unnecessary if your hosting company provides a service for backing up the database and restoring it. In which case, just make a back up before you do something risky and if something goes wrong then restore the backup.

Hello,

I test anything such as upgrading on a localhost installation because it is not worth the risk of the downtime caused by an incorrect upgrade. - the hosting provider can get a backup of the site up and running again, but this does take time.

If you have a really busy site, you would get a lot of frustrated users while you are attempting to upgrade a site. - For instance, when I moved from version 3.x to version 4.x it took several days to get the upgrade working correctly.
How to Upgrade DotNetNuke v3.x to v4.4.1

Thanks,

Yes, you’re right, I now realize. Sometimes a backup doesn’t restore correctly, so even for sites that get only a few visitors and that can be down for a short time while the backup is restored, they should test their upgrade or potenially dangerous changes first.

I had that problem with my website. Before I tried the upgrade I first tried your method of transferring a live to local to test the upgrade first. But I could not restore the database via Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio Express. I kept getting this error:

“System.Data.SqlClient.SqlError: The operating system returned the error '5(Access is denied.)' while attempting 'RestoreContainer::ValidateTargetForCreation' on 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL\data\...”

But I admit I was hasty and didn’t want to struggle with that problem so I tested my theory that I could just restore the DNN website if the upgrade failed. So I backed up the DNN database and I copied the entire website via FTP and waited until about 3AM, then I tried the upgrade and it failed. I tried to restore the website but it still didn’t work…

Now the website is down and I’m now waiting on tech support to see if I can restore it to a prior date.

The moral is, listen to Lee, and take many precautions, more so then I did, when attempting an upgrade or potenially dangerous changes.

Thanks Lee!