Getting your site ready for Elgg 1.7 - Part 3

Part 1: creating a test site

Part 2: backing up your site

Trying out Elgg 1.7 on a test server

So you have gotten hands on the beta for 1.7 and you're just itching to throw it on your production server and see what happens. Don't. You need to test it first on your test site.

Clean Install

The first step that you might want to do is create a fresh install of the 1.7. Create a new database, go through the install process, turn on the plugins that come with Elgg (initially wait on the 3rd party plugins), create a few test users. This lets you get a feel for what has changed in this version. You probably have a mental list of bugs that drive you crazy. Do some testing for those bugs. If they are still there, check the core and plugins Tracs to see if they are listed. If they aren't, submit a bug report with the steps need to reproduce the bug.

Once you feel comfortable with a clean install of 1.7, start trying out some of the 3rd party plugins that you run on your production site. One of the biggest changes in 1.7 is related to increasing the security of actions (what happens when you submit a new blog for example). This has been in the works since Elgg 1.5 but not all community plugins have add this important protection. If you see messages about missing tokens, contact the developer of the community plugin to let them know.

Trying Out the Upgrade Process

If you're really lucky, everything checks out with your custom and community plugins and there aren't any show stopper bugs in the beta. If so, you will want to clone your production environment (code, database, data directory) and move it onto your test site. There are instructions for this on the Elgg wiki and you should also read Part 1 of this series (really!). Once you now have a copy that is full functional on your test site (and do test it out to make sure everything is working), copy the new Elgg code over the old code and hit the upgrade script with your browser. You'll see the whirling E for a while and then a message telling your site ha sbeen upgraded. If everything went well, you should be able to use the site and test everything out. If something went wrong, investigate and report back to the community on what happened.

The Big Changes

There has been well over a hundred bugs fixed in this release. Many of those are the kind that make it hard for developers to build plugins. Others are ones that an average user of Elgg would notice. As you evaluate your upgraded test site, here are some ones to look for:

  • Action tokens required
  • Database modifications for better internationalization support
  • Data directory path modifications - Elgg doesn't use usernames in the user's data directory path anymore - if something goes wrong, you may see all or some of the profile icons disappear
Feedback and Planning

Feedback and Planning

Discussions about the past, present, and future of Elgg and this community site.