The upgrade process for Elgg depends on how your current installation was set up.

If you installed Elgg using Composer, you should follow the official Composer-based upgrade guide. In general, the steps are:

• Back up your database and the entire project directory.

• Update your composer.json to require the newer Elgg version.

• Run composer update.

• After updating, log in to your site and run the upgrade script (usually via /upgrade).

If your installation was done by downloading and extracting the archive (non-Composer method), then the process is slightly different:

• Back up your database and all files (especially the data directory and elgg-config settings).

• Replace the core Elgg files with the new version, but don't overwrite your data directory or configuration files.

• Visit /upgrade in your browser to run the upgrade process.

Also, please note that Elgg has specific upgrade rules between versions:

• You can upgrade from any minor version to a higher minor version within the same major version.

• To move to the next major version, you must first be on the latest minor release of the previous major version.

• Once on certain baseline versions, you may upgrade further without stepping through every minor version.

In your case, this means you should not jump directly from 5.1.0 to the latest version.

Instead, you should:

• First upgrade from 5.1.0 to the latest 6.x release (for example, 6.3.7).

• Then upgrade to the next major version (for example, 7.0.4 or later stable release).

Make sure to create backups before and after each upgrade step.

Also, don't forget that 3rd-party plugins must be updated as well, ensuring compatibility with each Elgg version you install.

Finally, it is worth checking previously discussed topics (1, 2, 3), as many upgrade scenarios and issues have already been covered there.

Thanks

I have been able to uptate to 6.3.7 using composer....

I had to remove many apps and reinstall, to get rid of errors...

i have also sent an email regarding some custom plugins...

Best Wishes

Arindam

So after searching some more I found an old plugin named au_subgroups but it seems to be very old and not managed anymore. Sounds like what I need so I may try to update it. I also found a plugin named Profile Manager which seems to almost do what I want but not quite so maybe I need to tweak it a bit also. In any case, thanks for bearing with me and any advice or other solutions great appreciated.

While there's no ready-made plugin, your problem can be solved with a custom plugin.

All you need to do is add a new "Category" field (input/text by default or input/tags for multi-categories) to the group creation form and organize pages with group sorting by category.

au_subgroups

Look at hypeGroups.

(Ismayil recently updated this plugin using AI, so give it a try, it might not work as intended.)

This plugin doesn't contain an interface for creating subgroups from the admin panel, so you'll also need a custom plugin to override the structure of your groups' subtypes.

Readme is very helpful.

Thanks for this will take a look.  Had to abandon the Profile Manager as I couldn't get it to show categories on the Groups page. Always showed the Elgg default group page no matter what I tried. hypeGroups looks interesting though.

Ah, Sonnet should be ok for the job if you want to save some tokens. I have tried to minimize the inference and "thinking" that's needed. There are lot of AST rules as well as very detailed instructions on how to rewrite code to match newer Elgg version requirements. 

Nevermind!  Figured out the correct way to do it seems to be to create a new mod that overrides the css.  If it's any use to anyone else I just create this structure.

tdntheme/
├── composer.json         # Plugin metadata
├── elgg-plugin.php       # Plugin configuration  
├── README.md
└── views/
    └── default/
        └── tdntheme/
            └── css/
                └── custom.css   # Your CSS overrides

And added this to the custom.css:

/* ==========================================================================
   Walled Garden (Login Page) Mobile Fixes
   ========================================================================== */

@media (max-width: 768px) {
    /* Fix: Login page content getting cut off on mobile */
    .elgg-page-walled-garden > .elgg-inner {
        min-width: auto !important;
        max-width: 100% !important;
        width: 100% !important;
        padding: 0 1rem;
        box-sizing: border-box;
    }

    /* Make the heading wrap properly */
    .elgg-heading-walled-garden {
        font-size: 1.5rem !important;
        line-height: 1.3 !important;
        word-wrap: break-word;
        overflow-wrap: break-word;
    }

    /* Ensure page body doesn't overflow */
    .elgg-page-walled-garden > .elgg-inner > .elgg-page-body {
        padding: 0.5rem !important;
    }
}

/*
=== Didn't need this but if the site title was longer... ===
@media (max-width: 480px) {
    .elgg-heading-walled-garden {
        font-size: 1.2rem !important;
    }
}
*/

/* ==========================================================================
   Mobile Responsive Fixes (Logged-in pages)
   ========================================================================== */

@media (max-width: 768px) {
    /* Fix: Site title getting cut off / center-justified on mobile */
    .elgg-page-header .elgg-heading-site,
    .elgg-page-topbar .elgg-heading-site,
    .elgg-heading-site {
        text-align: left;
        overflow: visible;
        white-space: normal;
        word-wrap: break-word;
    }

    /* Ensure header content doesn't overflow */
    .elgg-page-header,
    .elgg-page-topbar {
        padding-left: 10px;
        padding-right: 10px;
    }

    /* Make site title more readable on small screens */
    .elgg-heading-site a {
        font-size: 1.2em;
        line-height: 1.3;
    }
}

@media (max-width: 480px) {
    /* Extra small devices */
    .elgg-heading-site a {
        font-size: 1em;
    }
}

/* ==========================================================================
   Group Page / Owner Block - Mobile Fixes
   ========================================================================== */

@media (max-width: 768px) {
    /* Stack image and description vertically on mobile */
    .elgg-image-block.groups-profile {
        flex-direction: column !important;
        align-items: center;
    }

    /* Limit the group icon size on mobile */
    .elgg-image-block.groups-profile > .elgg-image,
    .elgg-image-block.groups-profile img {
        max-width: 150px !important;
        height: auto !important;
    }

    /* Give the description full width when stacked */
    .elgg-image-block.groups-profile > .elgg-body,
    .elgg-image-block.groups-profile .elgg-profile-fields {
        width: 100%;
        text-align: left;
        margin-top: 1rem;
    }
}

There's probably some work to do with Pages too, but I ran out of time.  I'll find some time this week to do those, find the right-hand-side Pages menu that vanished somewhere along the line, and fix my personal bug-bear: members lists and counts including banned users literally everywhere...

I didn't have time to respond; you were quicker.

This is a problem with the current Elgg layout.

We often have to fix it using styles in custom plugins, but there's no single solution since 3rd-party plugins can also have their own styles, etc.

I'm glad you fixed the issues in your custom plugin!

Welcome to Elgg!

Look at these plugins:

• Spam Login Filter https://github.com/rohit1290/spam_login_filter
• Spam Throttle https://github.com/rohit1290/spam_throttle
• IP Tracker https://github.com/rohit1290/tracker

Nikolai, thanks I'll look them over. I am currently working on a plugin based on an older wp plugin that I updated myself which works flawlessly still to this day. But I will have a try with your suggestions also to see if they meet with my needs.

Not for us ;) https://pw.wzm.me/members All customizations are in your custom plugins 

Are you inviting me to install it? ;-)

Not install but create the customizations.

Added a gist.