Upgrade Magento

 

Upgradation is a natural process; even human beings keep on updating their practices time by time. Similarly Software upgradation can be performed for many reasons such as,

1. New Features: This is the one of the main purposes for which any upgrade is made. To give you example take Antivirus software’s, as new threats arrive it is necessary to bring upgrades and patches on frequent bases to eradicate them. Also new features may relate to performance, scalability, bug fixing, security and optimization etc. 2. Stability and integrity: Sometimes an earlier release is not stable, it contains bugs and does not provide consistency. 3. Old version terminated: With the passage of time, old version will be terminated and its support will no longer exist.

You might need to upgrade your Magento store for any of the above mentioned reasons. It is to be noted that upgrading Magento will be complicated when having multiple stores, huge amount of configurable products and databases. So lot of precautionary steps has to be taken before starting this process such as,

1) Understanding of new version: Before upgradation, a sound knowledge of new version must be possessed because after installation the new version might make modifications which otherwise would not be able to track. So it is necessary that you should know how the new version makes modification. 2) Backups: It is always better exercise to take backups before upgradation to revert back to previous state in case of any undesired situation.

Depending upon your current versions you can upgrade to Magento 1.7 up till now. We are expecting Magento 2 in the last quarter of this year. As mentioned above, upgradation might be a complex process depending upon your current store state and many issues can occur such as issues caused by modifications made by third party utilities, any custom work done etc. For example templates prior to Magento 1.4 requires several changes before upgradation from previous versions, issues with payment methods, errors related to the checkout pages when custom theme is used and third party Magento pluginsmight also cause errors.

How to Upgrade Magento

If below mentioned steps have been taken, you should be able to continue with the upgradation process smoothly,

a) Database backup b) Backup public_html directory c) Make following changes to .htaccess file #Order allow, deny #Allow from all Order deny, allow Deny from all Allow from

 If upgrading from version higher than 1.4.2 then follow below procedure,

1. chmod 550 ./mage 2. ./mage mage-setup 3. ./mage config-set preferred_state stable 4. ./sync 5. ./mage upgrade-all –force 6. ./mage install http://connect20.magentocommerce.com/community Mage_All_Latest-force

It will probably take at least 2 hours to get your store updated to the latest version. Just enter the URL of your store in your browser and wait for the time. During this process many errors related to Database tables creation, extension compatibility issues, duplicate keys etc. might come, sometimes refreshing a page will resolve the issues or otherwise you can disable all the extensions and clear the cache to investigate further.

If upgrading from version lower than 1.4.2 then follow below procedures,

1. ./pear upgrade –f magento-core/Mage_All_Latest-stable

Similarly many errors might come but they can be ignored at this point. It will take approx. 10 minutes to half an hour to upgrade your store to the latest version. You will see a white screen after you enter your store’s URL in browser until the upgradation is complete. Once it is done your store will load normally.

Need more help:

Our experienced Magento development team can professionally install, upgrade and configure your Magento Store and troubleshoot your Magento Modules. Further more you can hire an expert dedicated Magento developer to be dedicated to your work making sure you get trouble free Store up and running quickly. Contact us for more information.