By Lee Sykes
March 2007
In this article I outline the steps taken to upgrade DNN Creative Magazine from v3.2.2 to v4.4.1. The upgrade process for DNN Creative Magazine was slightly more complicated than a standard upgrade so I thought it would be useful for you to read the process I went through.
The basic upgrade process for DotNetNuke has not changed since I created the video tutorial on
how to upgrade DotNetNuke from v3.x to v3.2 on a live website, so I recommend that you view the video tutorial before attempting an upgrade.
Introduction to the DNN Creative Magazine v3.2.2 installation
There were several problems with the old DNN Creative Magazine installation which were only visible ‘behind the scenes’ while working as an administrator. The main problem was that the File Manager and all tasks related to selecting files was corrupt, this was caused by exceeding the 2 GB file size limit for a portal. (The file size limit problem has been fixed in later versions of DotNetNuke).
The next problem was that when installing modules / skins the site would refuse to install them, or they would install and errors would occur. (Probably also caused by the file size limit problem). Therefore, the modules had not been upgraded to the latest versions, so potentially some of the modules also had bugs.
Let’s not make this too easy
In addition to upgrading DotNetNuke I also wanted to upgrade the SQL database that was currently used for the DNN Creative installation. We were running v3.2.2 on a SQL 2000 server and I wanted to upgrade this to v4.4.1 on a SQL 2005 server. My hosting provider had previously informed me that I should change any DotNetNuke installations that are using their SQL 2000 server to use their new SQL 2005 server because of performance benefits.
As you can see this was not going to be an easy upgrade...