A checklist for Magento Enterprise update

Question

I have a question. I am most likely facing an upgrade from my Magento 1.7EE/1.14 right now due to the fact the system is just old.

Now I am wondering what specific steps and hints the community here can give me. I read a lot and I know my question is really broad but I just don´t want to miss anything in the first place.

I did a backup of all my files and my database already.

I checked this https://github.com/magento-hackathon/upgrade-checklist But i´m still wondering if there is more to be concerned about and what impact that would have for me in case of time and difficulties normally.

I am also still wondering to which version i should upgrade now. Can some people give some advice please?

Answer 1

While backups with Magento can be straightforward there are many things to consider that can cause potential complications. Here are just a few things to consider:

1. Do you have any extensions installed (check app/code/community/ and app/code/local/) and will they be compatible with the new version you are upgrading to?
2. Do you have any modified core files? This one is HUGE. I have seen it many times when a lazy / sloppy developer modifies core Magento files. When this happens you will almost always have issues when upgrading because those changes might be lost. To check for this you need to obtain a FRESH copy of the CURRENT version you are using and run a "diff". There are a few desktop programs that can do this or you can easily do it via the command line using the "diff" command. You want to run this and compare the files for your current version against the same FRESH version and compare app/code/core/ on both. If any files differ you will either need to re-implement those changes in the upgraded version (not recommended) or properly move those changes into the app/code/local/ folder (recommended).
3. Create a testing plan. Sometimes you might have issues but they're not glaring and obvious. Create a good plan for in-depth testing of the site to be sure you can discover any problems if they occur.
4. Always do an upgrade on a dev machine. Chances are you'll have issues that you'll need to work through. Do it on dev first and document the fixes / changes you have to do. After you get it all working then you should have a game plan to do it for your live site.