Upgrading Invision Community Version 4.7.20 to 5.0.6 Step by Step Instruction

After backing up database and files what are the steps you take? PLEASE STEP BY STEP...

These are compatibly screen

File below is not helpful at all

https://invisioncommunity.com/4guides/advanced-options/server-management/install-and-upgrade-r259/

Please help me to figure out steps

Thanks

Hi @media,

You should follow the steps under the heading 'Manual Upgrade' on the guide you linked to in your post.

Considering you have already backed up, these would be the steps:

1. Download the Invision Community 5 package from your Client Area → Manage this purchase → Download Invision Community 5

2. Unzip the downloaded folder and upload the contents to your server where Invision Community is located using an FTP client, making sure you upload to your community's main directory. Overwrite all files and folders. Confirm all files have been uploaded and no errors are encountered.

3. Type in your community address into the URL bar of your browser, followed by /admin/upgrade and login with your administrator credentials.

Should be smooth sailing from there, but let us know on this topic if you run into any issues.

In terms of the compatibility items, its just a case of being aware of them when you upgrade. So to clarify those

• Status updates wont be there anymore. They are removed entirely. So if you are using them, maybe ensure your members know what to expect
  

• Signing in with display name is removed, so you can only log in with email. Of course, it will state to put in your email to sign in, but I have seen people a week or so beforehand, add announcements on their site to make sure people are aware
  

• Open tagging has been removed, but will be converted to closed tags.

8 hours ago, media said:

File below is not helpful at all

https://invisioncommunity.com/4guides/advanced-options/server-management/install-and-upgrade-r259/

Just out of curiosity, why didn't you find the link above helpful? It contains detailed instructions on the subject at hand.

Thank you, guys,

How about applications and plugins from Version 4

Before upgrade what do you do with them????

Applications: Do you disable them and leave them?

Plugins: do you uninstall them? (I heard no plugin in Version 5)?

How do you upgrade those?

You dont have to do anything with them. They will just be disabled on upgrade. Plugins will retain the data, but you will no longer be able to see them as plugins dont exist (they need to be rewritten as applications by the author). In terms of how to upgrade them, you would need to speak to the authors of those items. Generally, for applications it would be to upload a new version, as you do now. For plugins it depends what the author decided to do there

54 minutes ago, media said:

Before upgrade what do you do with them????

If you don't plan to use them in the future by way of upgrading them, personally I would uninstall them before the upgrade, but make sure to make a backup of their stuff that they have added to the database. Otherwise simply disable them prior to the upgrade.

56 minutes ago, media said:

Plugins: do you uninstall them? (I heard no plugin in Version 5)?

My advice, if I may, is to delete them prior to the upgrade.

57 minutes ago, media said:

How do you upgrade those?

You can upgrade them from the Applications section of your Admin Panel, but only if their authors have released their Ips 5 versions.

12 minutes ago, Miss_B said:

My advice, if I may, is to delete them prior to the upgrade.

This is bad advice if you are going to upgrade them, and they happen to have data involved with them!

1 hour ago, Marc said:

This is bad advice if you are going to upgrade them, and they happen to have data involved with them!

With all due respect I beg to differ. I know for a fact from personal experience that removing them is much better than disabling them. Regarding their upgrade, that was the reason that I mentioned in my previous post about making first a backup of the stuff that third party plugins/apps had added in the database, before their removal.

On a side note, this is not the first time that you claim that I have given bad advice, when in fact my 'bad advice' has solved the issue as seeing at the following topic:

Edited April 16Apr 16 by Miss_B

8 minutes ago, Miss_B said:

With all due respect I beg to differ. I know for a fact from personal experience that removing them is much better than disabling them.

If you don't plan to upgrade them then yes, it is not an issue to delete them. However, if you plan to use a third party application/plugin from version 4 in version 5, you're deleting data by uninstalling it. That could be valuable data to the community owner/members.

If you meant, delete the files on the file system, that is rather different so out of an abundance of caution, you may wish to clarify when providing instructions. It still is not recommended, however.

In addition to what Marc mentioned above, it may be a good idea to contact the developers first to confirm whether or not their plugins have been updated to work on v5 if they are a necessity for your community after upgrading.

14 hours ago, Miss_B said:

On a side note, this is not the first time that you claim that I have given bad advice, when in fact my 'bad advice' has solved the issue as seeing at the following topic:

I do feel I need to clarify this here. You are providing advice at times, which is something you should only really do at your own risk and if you know what you are doing. Often this advise is being given to people who are not sure what they are doing. Others (as in the very one you pointed out), your solution does indeed get the person past the issue they are encountering, but its not a 'fix'.

To use an analogy on that specific item. The user has a leak in their roof:

• Your advise there was to get a ladder, climb up on the roof, having no knowledge of safely doing so.. Get a new roof tile, and fix the hole in the roof, having never fit one previously. The issue was indeed however fixed, and the user could indeed move on. But you dont know what caused it. You cant be certain that issue wont return.
  

• What needed to happen, was that a professional needed to take a look at the hole in the roof, determine what causes it, once that's determined fix the hole in the roof, to back to the manufacturer of the part that failed, and ensure its fixed there, so it doesn't happen in any other upgrade process for either that user or any other user.

In the scenario with this one here. The user is moving house, and has some boxes upstairs that are not going to fit in the house, so could never actually go in there.

• Your advise is to throw out the boxes. The user doesnt need to check if there is anything in the boxes, just throw them away
  

• Our advice is to take the boxes with them. When they get to the new house, the boxes wont fit, so will end up being thrown out. But everything inside the box will be moved into the house. The box contained valuable items that would have otherwise been thrown away

Please understand, I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that you are genuinely trying to help and assist members. We of course welcome that. But that doesnt make you immune from mistakes, and at times people will correct you on those mistakes. And I'm not saying this as someone who is immune myself. I have been pulled up a few times even by members where someone will say "Well actually, you could just......". None of us are immune.

9 hours ago, Gary said:

In addition to what Marc mentioned above, it may be a good idea to contact the developers first to confirm whether or not their plugins have been updated to work on v5 if they are a necessity for your community after upgrading.

I have already contacted developers, and they are releasing V5 version of their application

I have one plugin and developer created a application version of it...

So far, before upgrade I will leave my application as is and upgrade probably disable them and after upgrade i will upload new version and upgrade them? Correct?

Plugin I will delete it (no data attached) then after upgrade i will upload application version and continue....

The upgrader will disable any applications, yes. If you arent using, of course remove. If there are plugins which you know not to have any data attached then its indeed safe to remove beforehand, but to be honest really isnt needed (they are removed anyway)

On 4/17/2025 at 8:58 AM, Marc said:

Others (as in the very one you pointed out), your solution does indeed get the person past the issue they are encountering, but its not a 'fix'.

The solution that was provided at that topic that I linked, was the fix as well. That's very clear from the OP's reply there.

On 4/17/2025 at 8:58 AM, Marc said:

Your advise there was to get a ladder, climb up on the roof, having no knowledge of safely doing so.. Get a new roof tile, and fix the hole in the roof, having never fit one previously. The issue was indeed however fixed, and the user could indeed move on. But you dont know what caused it. You cant be certain that issue wont return.

This analogy is way off topic. The user at that topic had a missing database table during the upgrade. The solution was to re add the missing table and then go from there. If that was the only issue, which turned out to be, the re adding of the table was the solution and the fix. Whereas your advice was to restore the backup, go to the support area in the admin panel and all that, which was a huge waste of time and completely unnecessary at that point imo.

And yes, I didn't know what caused that particular issue and if it will return or not. But having a database backup will ensure that should that issue come back, it is fixed very simply by re adding the missing table.

On 4/17/2025 at 8:58 AM, Marc said:

But that doesnt make you immune from mistakes and at times people will correct you on those mistakes

I completely agree with this. I never claimed that I'm immune from mistakes. And as you said, no one is. And I've no problem at all if someone corrects me from my mistakes either. Matter of fact I always welcome that, because that's how I learn, from my mistakes.

But you called my advice bad, when in fact it isn't bad at all. How many topics have you seen here where users have run into issues during the upgrade, issues caused by third party stuff? Hence my advice on uninstalling them, especially those that the OP wasn't planning on using anymore and for the ones that were planned to be used, a backup of their database data was best made beforehand.

I would also suggest from experience to do major upgrades with as few apps as possible. There is a realistic chance that the uninstallation routine for an app not made for the current version will fail and one ends up stuck with an app that can’t be uninstalled and might not get upgrades anymore to fix this problem. Catch 22! So removing the app on a version it was made for is much safer and therefore a good idea.

In a similar sense, I suggest merging multiple storage locations into one while still on version 4.x and not on 5 (where options are limited).

2 hours ago, opentype said:

In a similar sense, I suggest merging multiple storage locations into one while still on version 4.x and not on 5 (where options are limited).

Thank you for the info but I did not get this part?

3 hours ago, Miss_B said:

And yes, I didn't know what caused that particular issue and if it will return or not. But having a database backup will ensure that should that issue come back, it is fixed very simply by re adding the missing table.

The problem is that you're thinking about the issue in isolation. Was it fixed for that user? Yes. What about other users? Having a core table disappear is something that we should investigate; it makes my eyebrows raise (which is one level before "makes my stomach hurt"). In this instance it was a table that did not have significant repercussions and therefore could be recreated. What if the next time, the table is the settings table?

As Marc said earlier, it's very clear that your intentions are sincere. And we don't expect any of our community members to be familiar with all the technical details of the codebase, so it's admirable when someone displays that level of knowledge. Of course there are times where some of our members provide solutions or answers that we've missed, but in general, it's far better to follow suggestions from IPS staff than from other members. We don't usually give instructions or ask questions just to kill time; if we ask, there's a reason for it.

51 minutes ago, Esther E. said:

What about other users? Having a core table disappear is something that we should investigate; it makes my eyebrows raise (which is one level before "makes my stomach hurt"). In this instance it was a table that did not have significant repercussions and therefore could be recreated.

We can't talk about other users here. We are talking about that specific user and that specific issue that they got. It's not like a size fits all you know. i.e. the advice to recreate that table was given for that particular issue only and for the reason that you mentioned.

55 minutes ago, Esther E. said:

What if the next time, the table is the settings table?

Then the advice/suggestion would have been different, depending on the issue that occurred. You are sounding as if I give the same advice for any such situations, when clearly that's not the case at all. And what's more, you can't go on when providing support with what if this or that happened? You can provide support only on the issue that really happens, and not on what could have or should have happened.

59 minutes ago, Esther E. said:

We don't usually give instructions or ask questions just to kill time; if we ask, there's a reason for it.

I never doubted that.

Edited Friday at 02:06 PM5 days by Miss_B

Looks like topic highjacked ...!

On 4/18/2025 at 10:15 AM, opentype said:

I would also suggest from experience to do major upgrades with as few apps as possible. There is a realistic chance that the uninstallation routine for an app not made for the current version will fail and one ends up stuck with an app that can’t be uninstalled and might not get upgrades anymore to fix this problem. Catch 22! So removing the app on a version it was made for is much safer and therefore a good idea.

In a similar sense, I suggest merging multiple storage locations into one while still on version 4.x and not on 5 (where options are limited).

I agree. Although, incidentally, I would suggest removing applications that aren't used anyway, just as a matter of cause. To me, if you're worried if the uninstaller will work or not, it probably should be something you've already removed. Otherwise, you would be worrying more about keeping hold of the data. :)

On 4/18/2025 at 1:04 PM, media said:

Thank you for the info but I did not get this part?

Opentype is just mentioning this in case you have multiple storage locations for your data. There are some who have spilt (for example) downloads items into a different location to attachments. That's something that wont be possible in the future, and so would indeed be advisable to merge if you have. If its not something you have ever done (unlikely if you werent sure what he meant), then its not something to worry about. :)

On 4/18/2025 at 11:51 PM, media said:

Looks like topic highjacked ...!

Partially my fault that. My apologies. Just didnt want you to get incorrect info :)