For each minor branch, upgrade just to the latest release (1.9.8, 1.10.6, et al).

Practices vary regarding plugins. In your case, I would disable all 3rd-party plugins to make each intermediate upgrade easy, then on 2.3 start enabling them and seeing what breaks (watch your error_log!).

For shorter upgrade paths (when I upgraded 1.9 to 1.12) I might enable plugins after each minor upgrade to minimize the number of bugs I take on at once. YMMV.

Obviously do this with tested backups in place on a non-production copy!

Good luck and we'll be here for you.

It's probably worth your time to try putting your 3rd-party plugins in a fresh 2.3 install first to see what you're up against.

Also, I wouldn't do this without having my site in git as a branch off the official repo. E.g. clone the tag matching your Elgg version, make your own branch, add all your plugins to your branch. Then each upgrade operation is just 1 command: git merge <next_tag>, like git merge 1.9.8

installing from backup right now will be done 5m.

Thanks

Yes Jaakkol I have v1.8 installed right now upgrade to v1.9

So under the install guide: Then replace the old installation directory with the new one. This way you are guaranteed to get rid of obsolete files which might cause problems if left behind.

Question does the mean install the v1.9 file over the v1.8 without v1.9 .htaccess and settings.php file?

Thanks

ComWay Admin 

Here is log error: [12-Nov-2015 03:54:04 America/Chicago] PHP Warning:  PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20060613/xdebug.so' - /usr/local/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20060613/xdebug.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory in Unknown on line 0

And I now have the fatal error and upgrade error again. Is their a way to turn off the debug plugin?

Thanks

ComWayAdmin

These errors indicate problems with your PHP installation. You should contact your hosting provider.

Ok Thanks Steve Clay I have posted this to Hostgator Tech Support hope they can fix it.

Thanks

Admin ComWay