Upgrading to Sitefinity v. 7.0

 

If you have downloaded the latest release of Sitefinity v. 7.0 and have attempted to upgrade to this release from any prior release, you may have already discovered that there are some problems with the upgrade process.

Most notably, this version of Sitefinity, unlike previous versions of Sitefinity requires a web.config upgrade. 

As you can probably guess, this process is incredibly fraught with problems.

I have personally tried upgrading 4-5 Sitefinity v. 6.x projects and NONE of them have succeeded with the automatic Web.config upgrade!

So what do you do?

Well, the recommendation from Sitefinity Support is to upgrade from a particular release to the release versions they specify in this article: http://www.sitefinity.com/documentation/documentationarticles/installation-and-administration-guide/upgrade

Otherwise, you can simply manually upgrade directly to Sitefinity v. 7.0 by following the steps outlined below:

1. Create a blank/empty Sitefinity v. 7.0 project
2. Upgrade the Sitefinity project to Sitefinity v. 7.0 using the Sitefinity Project Manager as usual
3. When it comes to the Web.config upgrade, you will choose “No” to have the Sitefinity Project Manager automatically upgrade your Web.config file
4. After your project has been upgraded to Sitefinity v. 7.0, examine the Web.config file from the blank/empty project Sitefinity v. 7.0 project you created earlier and compare it with your existing Sitefinity project’s Web.config file using a tool such as Beyond Compare (http://scootersoftware.com/) or DiffMerge (http://sourcegear.com/diffmerge/downloads.php) or UltraCompare (http://www.ultraedit.com/downloads/ultracompare_download.html)
5. Then merge the changes from the Sitefinity v. 7.0 Web.config into your existing Web.config file.
6. Verify that the upgraded Sitefinity v. 7.0 project now works successfully.