Upgrading CiviCRM from 2.x to 3.x Tips And Tricks

I recently upgraded CiviCRM for one of our clienst from 2.1.4 to 3.0.4 and learned a few tips that I’ll share.  In most cases you just need to be sure to follow the instructions that CiviCRM provides and make all the intermediate upgrades along the way.  But In doing so, I ran into some frustrating problems, but through perseverence, ingenuity, and most important;y awesome support from Fen, Alex and Galaxy, I got around the problems and got the site upgraded.

So here is what you should look our for:

  • First, do everything that CiviCRM’s Documentation recommends (like backing up your database, turn off all civicrm related module in drupal etc…).
  • Turn off FastCGI if you are running it, you do this in your .htaccess file by commenting out the line for ‘AddHandler fcgid-script .php’.
  • Enable debugging and backtrace (you do this at http://example.com/civicrm/admin/setting/debug?reset=1)
  • Ensure that your resource urls are all set right (you do this at http://example.com/civicrm/admin/setting/url?reset=1)
  • Remove the contents of the templates_c directory (~/sites/example.com/files/civicrm/templates_c)
  • Clear your browser cache and website cache for good measure
  • Then run your upgrade, remember if you are going from 2.1.x to 3.x you need to upgrade to 2.2.x first. I recommend taking a backup at that point.

So there you have it, a few tips on making your CiviCRM upgrade experience go more smoothly!