CiviCRM upgrade WTFs

Written By Allen Shaw

I'm on a mission to make it easy for non-technical site owners to master and maintain CiviCRM.

Nowhere does this become more difficult than in the matter of CiviCRM upgrades.

A CiviCRM upgrade “should be” straightforward. But too often it's plagued by problems that simply flummox non-technical site owners.

This email starts a series which aims to prepare you, as a non-technical site owner, to handle the surprises that may come up during your next upgrade of CiviCRM.

We'll cover the following topics over the next few days:

  • Backups require some technical knowledge

  • Code customizations make everything harder

  • "Core hacks" are the devil

  • Extensions must support your new core version

  • Message Templates modifications

  • In Joomla: Upgrades can fail to cleanup old files

  • Kooky extra steps in pre-upgrade and post-upgrade instructions (SQL queries, file patches, etc.)

Depending on your appetite for adventure, these are all things you can master.

But it can help to know ahead of time what you might be getting yourself into.

All the best,
A.

Allen Shaw
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