Upgrade from EE 2.5.2 to 5.x
How Do I?
Hello,
I’m taking over the web development for my company. Our website has not been maintained well. We had someone else develop the website and have no documentation on it.
I am looking to upgrade to the latest framework, and believe I need to follow the upgrade path of 2 -> 3 -> 4 -> 5. However the files that I have downloaded for version 3 appear to be contained in a different structure.
I have a Manager folder which contains CodeIgniter, ExpressionEngine, images, Themes.
Can anyone point me in the right direction?
Thanks
Welcome to the forums!
EE3 was a complete rewrite from EE2 so file structure changed quite a bit. EE4/5 use the same file structure as EE3.
Upgrading EE2 > EE5 can be quite a task, the main hurdle is replacing 3rd party addons. Most popular addons have been updated to work with EE5, some haven’t but have alternatives, while others have bitten the dust.
Some pre-planning is required
First you need to assess what 3rd party addons you’re using and plan how you’re going to upgrade them to EE5 versions:
If an addon has an EE5 version you have an upgrade path available.
If an addon doesn’t have an EE5 version you have a few choices:
- Locate a similar EE5 addon that does the same thing (some template/content tweaks may be required)
- Remove that addon and replace with native functionality (EE5 has many new native features which addons previously catered for)
- Write a new addon
Upgrading EE
Do EE2 > EE3 first, once that’s done and working upgrading EE3 > EE5 is fairly painless.
Follow the instructions at https://docs.expressionengine.com/v3/installation/upgrade_from_2.x.html
Lastly, a very important thing: don’t do major upgrades like this on a live site. Instead, make a working copy of the site you can work on as a development site. Take a backup before every upgrade stage so if things go wrong you can easily restore back to the original. When you’ve completed the upgrade and things are all working you can then replace the live site with your new version.
I’m trying to upgrade from 2 to 3 as well. I followed the instructions and found a Master of 3 to grab from Git, but I’ve run into an error.
You must define the following database parameters: database ee/EllisLab/ExpressionEngine/Service/Database/DBConfig.php:157
The advice I’ve found is either very vague about “updating/replacing the config file”, or in one case didn’t even resemble the code in my system file. For example, the answer here: https://expressionengine.stackexchange.com/questions/41628/error-message-after-upgrading-to-3-5-17-from-2-11-9
That’s not what my config file looks like. Mine looks like: $config[‘db_hostname’] = ”; $config[‘db_username’] = ”; $config[‘db_password’] = ”; $config[‘db_name’] = ”; $config[‘db_type’] = ”; $config[‘db_prefix’] = ”; $config[‘db_conntype’] = ”;
Obviously I’ve removed my actual database information. It’s not established in what looks to be JavaScript as that StackExchange response has, though, nor can I find any file that looks like it has that precise info. So I followed the instructions, but I’m hitting this database error that only states where the exception/error is thrown but no route to the direct cause.
Any idea as to what could be causing this error? Or if I need a more up-to-date config file?