Gabe Sumner

Gabe Sumner

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Now Upgraded to Sitefinity 3.2

Monday, May 05, 2008

Rock ClimberI am happy to announce, after a dozen attempts, I have managed to upgrade Goondocks.com to Sitefinity 3.2.

My advice to anyone attempting to upgrade from 3.1 is to go through this entire process on your local machine before you even attempt to do this in a live setting.  You will discover many controls have changed.  You will also discover the "ControlTemplate" changes you made for 3.1 may no longer be compatible with the updated 3.2 controls.

Here are the steps involved in the Goondocks.com upgrade: 

  • Backup web files.
  • Backup database.
  • Disable web server
  • FTP "Sitefinity" directory.
  • FTP "bin" directory.
  • FTP "RadControls" directory.
  • FTP updated "web.config" file.
  • Re-add customizations to the "web.config" file.
  • Delete "/bin/RadChart.NET2.dll" file.
  • Delete "/bin/RadEditor.NET2.dll" file.
  • Restart web server.
  • Access web site.
  • Pray.
  • Use wizard, re-setup the connection to the database.
  • Login to Sitefinity with my existing username/password.

At this point my existing pages were viewable; although my web site looked horrible.  Sitefinity 3.2 introduces several updated versions of the 3.1 controls.  In some cases these updated controls were not compatible with my 3.1 Control Templates.

  • Work through the web site.
  • Update Master Templates as needed.
  • Update Control Templates as needed.
  • Update stylesheets as needed.
  • Replace old controls as needed. 
  • Replace the Blog posts control.

At this point all of my Sitefinity 3.1 blog posts were missing. 

I now had some of my blog posts back.  For some reason approximately 10 blogs posts had simply disappeared.  Upon investigation I discovered these blogs posts were missing an entry in the "sf_CmsContentVersion" table.

To fix this I manually inserted the values.  I used the "sf_CmsContentBase" table as a reference.  Using that table I was able to see which blog posts were missing.  I was also able to get the ID's and dates.

Each time I inserted a value in this table I needed to find the blog post in the Sitefinity Admin.  The title was blank.  I needed to click "Edit" and then "Save".  This fixed the blog post and made it look normal.

Ok, I now have all my blog posts, but the search-engine friendly blog URLs are gone.  The URL column in the "sf_CmsContentBase" table is "NULL".

  • Click through the Sitefinity Admin and re-save each blog post.

I then noticed that some of my blog URLs had changed.  For example I had a blog post titled "Sitefinity - Please, No More Modules!".

The old URL was: /08-04-19/sitefinity_-_please_no_more_modules_.aspx
The new URL was: /08-04-19/sitefinity_-_please_no_more_modules.aspx

Notice the missing "underscore" at the end.  To fix this I directly altered the "URL" column in the "sf_CmsContentBase" table.

All my blog posts now appear and the existing search-engine friendly URLs are working fine.  However, my "Tags" & "Categories" links aren't working.

The Blog controls are completely updated.  You need to remove your existing Blogs, Categories, Tags, and Archive controls and drop updated versions of these controls onto your page.  Configure the controls as needed.

Note the query string values that are being used between these controls.  The "Blog" control defaults to "BlogTagID" while the Tag control defaults to "CntTagID".  These obviously do not match and this will result in your Tag & Category links not working.

There are still a few lingering problems, but this web site is mostly functioning again. 

This upgrade process has been horrid.  I hope to never go through anything like this again.  I pity anyone trying to follow in my foot-steps.  I've already written about this however and Telerik expressed their commitment to addressing these issues in the future.  For the moment, I am going to let the issue drop.

All of this being said, I'm really enjoying some of the new Sitefinity 3.2 features.  After I've had some time to "live" with these new features I will write-up of Sitefinity 3.2 review.  For now, I'm simply thankful to be through the upgrade.

Category: Web Development

Tags Sitefinity

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Comments  6

  • Ivan 5 May, 03:29 PM

    Hi Gabe,
    first of all, I am glad you've managed to update to Sitefinity 3.2 and that you like the improvements.

    Now, I am really sorry that you've had to go through all the pain with the upgrade. I feel your pain...

    So here are some of the things that we've agreed on for the future releases. I know it'll sound common sense, and one will wonder why haven't we done this so far, but... the point is we are aware of the problems and we are acting to fix them and not let them happen again.
    In addition to testing upgrades on the empty sites, before we release we'll first upgrade our own sites running on the Sitefinity (now you must say - duuuh!).

    Second, the situation you've gone through with Blog controls won't repeat with News. Namely, we are overhauling News controls for the next release (over to ContentView control), but we'll leave the old controls as well... for some time.

    Some of the problems were caused simply by some tectonic changes that Sitefinity went through (e.g. upgrading RadControls to RadControls for AJAX - previously known RadControls Prometheus). We had had to provide more info on this, I know.

    Thanks for the sincere and constructive feedback you always give us; for that much more I'll enjoy your future report about how great was the next upgrade you make. You just keep being frank about Sitefinity - and we'll do the rest to ensure that you don’t have to include “praying” step in next walkthrough or event better that you don’t even have to write a walkthrough.

    Cheers!


  • Erik 28 May, 08:40 AM

    Gabe,

    Thanks again for all your constructive feedback on the upgrade process. I myself find that I am almost mouthing the words you write to myself because the experience is so similar. I found that I made some database changes that fouled up a few things in the RSS table and decided to just completely re-do my site in 3.2.

    I don't intend to do this with each successive upgrade, but I am glad I did it this time now that I have a feel for the kinds of changes that I need to be aware of when upgrading this product. By starting again from scratch and basically copying and pasting all my content from the old site to the new site I was able to learn more about the structure of Sitefinity as a whole. I realized that I was styling control elements in a single stylesheet as opposed to using the control templates stylesheet, which is better for maintainability. I realized the one big stylesheet that I created did become cumbersome.

    I also learned that Sitefinity's structure is organized with lots of files that exist for specific functions and it is important to be aware of this structure if you want to have any clue how your website works. I think that the developers should really really focus more time on proper training and documentation, mainly in the form of videos that walk through specific examples of customizations, because the only way for people to really get it is to see it in action. I learned just simply by doing, but I also place lots of value in the videos that Sitefinity produced showing how to setup basic elements of the site. To have some more in-depth ones that teach the structure of the files and folders and what control templates do what will be enormously helpful, especially when the controls completely change from version to version (i.e. BlogPosts).

    As a result of my 'starting from scratch' approach I now have a better designed and more organized site than I had before and have learned a lot along the way. It wasn't without it's speedbumps but I am glad I took the approach. For future upgrades I do suggest much more time go into properly documenting changes to new controls so that we can get a heads up on what things will be most affecting our upgrade because after all, those changes are the only real things that affect the upgrade because any new functionality will simply be explored once the system is upgraded. The only real work in an upgrade is working with the controls that have undergone changes that require action.

    Erik


  • ertertert 6 Jun, 09:44 AM

    more dining posts please you fucking faggot


  • Romi 7 Jun, 01:51 PM

    Hi Gabe, Priority see you Posted comments inside your controls. More that >500 by spider. Regards


  • Mohammed Alaa 29 Jun, 09:16 PM

    Hi Gabe,

    I'm very happy for updating update to Sitefinity 3.2 and I'm happy more you share your experience during the process it will defiantly will help us a lot,

    Thanks,
    Mohammed


  • Gabe 10 Aug, 11:15 AM

    Test Comment


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