Upgrading - now simpler?

[MichelleBCF]

Hi - I'm sorry if this has been covered, I did search, but couldn't find anything. Invision support have kindly done our upgrades for me over the past few times.. I've had problems with ftp in the past, and lost confidence in doing it myself. However, they have said that now we have version 4, upgrading is simpler. I'm running 4.1.19.1 and we now have the notification to upgrade to 4.1.19.3. Can I confirm how this now works, is it done more automatically from within the AdminCP, or will I need to use ftp?

Many thanks.

[Aaron M]

With the built in updater it should be easier (you'll still need your credentials if self hosted) but if the autoupdater cannot do it then it'll ask you to do it manually, which obviously you'd need to then FTP the files over yourself.

[Randy Calvert]

The board does not automatically update itself as it has potential to break changes you might have made to your site through either modifying the source code yourself or applying mods/skins.  If you are comfortable there are no major changes, you can use the upgrade function to have the board do most of the heavy lifting itself.  (No need to FTP files up, then kick off an upgrade script, etc.)

Obviously things can sometimes go wrong or you want to manually update so as not to break some changes you've made to your site.  In that case, you can still download the updated files from the client area and FTP them up to your server and run the updater manually.  

[MichelleBCF]

Thanks to you both.. I appreciate that it won't do it automatically, I was just wondering if I'd need to sort out ftp myself.

I have a co-admin, who back ups all the files, database etc, but I don't want to bother her if I don't have to. She's also made a very basic skin, so hopefully she can put that back after the upgrade. 

[Randy Calvert]

Generally for minor changes like going from 4.1.19.1 to 4.1.19.2, the changes are minimal in terms of themes, etc.  If you want to see the differences, check out

https://invisionpower.com/index.php?app=core&module=system&controller=plugins&do=diff

You can put in the version you're moving from and the version you're considering moving to.  That tool will show you if there are any changes to the HTML or CSS.  If there are not, you should have nothing to worry about with your theme and should have a painless upgrade.  If there are differences, it might help to look at where they are.  For example, if it shows changes in the Commerce app, but you're not using that app you are also good to upgrade.  

If there are changes you see, you can still upgrade, but there might be some skinning issues that have to be corrected.

Now...  in between MAJOR versions like 4.2 or 5.0, you should most likely test it on a test board before applying it to your production site just to be safe.

Hope that helps!!