I have done a few of these upgrades for a few big sites like bink.nu and Sober.com. Here is the safest way without a ton of headaches. Please contact me if you need help, I’m willing to do the upgrade for people as well… Please do SQL backups after every step!

Database Instructions

1. Upgrade from Community Server 2.1 to 2007.0
2. Create a SQL backup.
3. Run SQL Compare against a fresh database of cs2007 to the upgraded database and make sure everything transferred correctly.
4. If there were changes, create a SQL backup.
5. Run the upgrade from 2007.0 to the last service pack release of 2007. (I think it was SP3).
6. Create a SQL backup.
7. Upgrade from CS 2007 SP3 to CS 2008.
8. Create a SQL backup.
9. Run SQL Compare against a freshly created CS 2008 database against the upgrade database to ensure everything is correct.
10. If there were changes, create a SQL backup.
11. Upgrade to CS 2008.5 using the upgrade utility.
12. Create a SQL backup.
13. Upgrade to latest service pack.
14. Run SQL Compare against a freshly created CS 2008.5 SP3 database against the upgrade database to ensure everything is correct.
15. ————— Continue here if you are going to the latest version of TC 5.5——-
16. Upgrade to TC 5.5.
17. Run SQL Compare against a freshly created CS TC 5.5 database against the upgrade database to ensure everything is correct.

Site File upgrade

1. The important thing here is that you need to do the upgrade process in order and make notes of changes. When doing this for a live database, do a run through of everything and make notes of things changing or failing and get them resolved a head of time.
2. For the upgrade to 2007, read the readme and make sure you copy the storage files into the correct spot.
   1. I would extract the complete 2007 site files and copy the photo storage folders and everything to the correct spot.
3. To upgrade to 2008, you need to run the upgrade utility.
   1. I would extract the complete 2008 site files and read the read me. I would copy the site files to the correct spots as they were.
   2. Once you are running this tool (somewhat buggy), I would make sure that you check the log file and copy over the file storage in the utilities folder to the file storage folder on the destination site.
   3. Then I would copy the old file storage folders to the same locations in the new site… I’ve had cases where they are hard linked and then you get missing files. I would only ever delete these folders after completely upgraded and you have them backed up…
4. To upgrade to 2008.5, I’m pretty sure it’s using the upgrade utility again, go back to step 3.
5. To upgrade to TC 5.5, you need to extract the clean website (to a new directory).
   1. Next, copy over only the file storage folder (leave the old file storage folders \photos, \blogs, \forums\ for now (just to be safe).

Final Steps

1. Copy the files from steps 4 or 5 to the web server.
2. Replace permissions on all upgraded files.
3. You will need to make sure that all of your custom scripts are updated accordingly.
4. Make sure all images and links are working.

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