Upgrade your Tiki site

Upgrading Tiki is easy as it's very similar to its installation. Upgrading is a one-way process. There is no way to downgrade. so it's a good idea to make a test upgrade on a backup, before proceeding with the real upgrade.

SUMMARY: Upgrade in a few simple steps Backup all the files and database from your current installation. Upload all the files of the newer version onto the files of the older version so any older ones are replaced (ftp with "overwrite if source is newer"). Run the installer which upgrades the database

More detailed instructions

• Upgrade your Tiki site
  • 1. Determine the version of your current Tiki
  • 2. Determine to which version you want to upgrade to
  • 3. Fresh install or Install over existing?
    • Fresh install
    • Install over existing
  • 4. Create a Backup
  • 5. Update your files
    • Fresh install
    • Install over existing
    • Updating via SVN
  • 6. Check permissions
  • 7. tiki-install.php to update your database
    • Fresh install
    • Install over existing
    • Alternative: Upgrading your database through shell
  • 8. Post tiki-install.php
  • 9. Update the .htaccess file
  • 10. Test
    • What to expect as problems
    • Where to look
    • What to do
    • 10.1. Check your content
    • 10.2. Check that the features you used to use are still turned on.
    • 10.3. Revise potentially unsafe plugin calls and approve or reject them
  • 11. Upgrade your Theme
  • Further help?
  • Notes for advanced users
    • symlinks
    • MultiTiki
    • Updating via SVN
    • Tiki Remote Instance manager (TRIM)
    • Manual Upgrade
    • Delete Unused Tables

1. Determine the version of your current Tiki

You can check by visiting tiki-admin.php?page=general

If your current Tiki is less than 1.8.0Tiki 1.8.0 was released on 2004-02-08 so it's highly unlikely that you still are running one. Older data upgrades scripts were removed from Tiki but are still available to download.: You need to upgrade to 1.8 first: Upgrade 1.7 to 1.8 (do not upgrade directly from 1.7.x to 1.9.x or later)

From 1.8.0 and more recent to any subsequent version (3.x, 4.x, etc): You can upgrade directly. Tiki 3.x and 4.x includes all the database migration scripts from 1.8.0 to that version.

2. Determine to which version you want to upgrade to

Keep in mind that Tiki3.x is the set of versions kept as Long Term Support (LTS) and that it's always safer to upgrade to version .1 (i.e. 4.1 instead of 4.0) if you are running production sites with extensive usage of many features.

• Download Tiki

In some cases of new releases (such as 3.3, for instance), you have the option to download and install only the files that have changed (from a compressed file, like: "tikiwiki-inc-3.2-to-3.3.tar.gz"), or to download the full new version (eg. "tikiwiki-3.3.tar.gz").

3. Fresh install or Install over existing?

Fresh install

You will need to manually move and/or re-integrate any data that is not stored in the MySQL database.

Install over existing

This will not delete any Tiki file which was used in previous versions, but are not longer needed. These files won't do anything except waste a bit of disk space. You can use Security Admin to detect leftover PHP files

4. Create a Backup

You need to backup

1. Your entire folder where Tiki is installed (and all subfolders)
2. Your MySQL database

See: Backup for details

5. Update your files

Tiki files are distributed in a compressed archive (ex.: .zip). You need to unpack (unzip) the files and upload them to your web server.

Fresh install

Instead of copying over your old files, you can make a fresh install. When running the installer, indicate the database information of your previous Tiki install (info in db/local.php) and upgrade.

Things that you may need to copy from your old site to your new site:

• img/wiki_up folder content (wiki images)
• some customized *.tpl files
• some customized styles ( *.css )
• the file gallery directory if using the file system to store the files
• the image gallery directory if using th file system to store to save the images
• Any customized code
  • If you make changes which can be useful to others, please consider joining the Tiki community and sharing your enhancements. Beyond helping others, you no longer will need to re-instate and maintain your enhancements at each upgrade. Please see How to get commit access.

Install over existing

To upgrade, copy or upload all the files of the newer version onto the files of the older version so any older ones are replaced (FTP with "overwrite if source is newer").

Before overwriting the files, remove the non-customized style-specific templates (templates/styles/*, and templates/yoursite/* if any). Previous versions often contained per-style modifications. Those files have since been removed from standard distribution, leaving the old files intact and not taking advantage of enhancements.

Updating via SVN

If you install using SVN, you can easily update via SVN -> Get Code

6. Check permissions

If your server is unhappy with Tiki file and folder permissions (this is dependent on server configuration), you may get an error message or blank pages. These failed attempts are typically in the error log.

Too few permissions
If a message appears indicating that specific directories are not writable, you will need to change the permissions on the indicated directories. Tiki will attempt to verify that it can read (and write) to all necessary directories. This error message will include instructions about how to resolve the issue.

Too many permissions
If you are getting Internal Server Error 500, blank pages or similar, it could be that the permissions on the files are not appropriate for your webhost.

If you have shell access, you can run:

sh setup.sh

and answer any questions. If you don't know what to answer, just click "enter" to keep the defaults.

After correcting any directory or file permission problems, visit tiki-install.php to continue.

7. tiki-install.php to update your database

Fresh install

On the tiki-install.php page of this new site, connect to the same database as your old site (you can find this info in the file db/local.php of your old site) and follow the instructions to upgrade your site. Make sure to click upgrade and not install, else you wipe out your database.

Alternatively, to avoid entering the information, you could just copy db/local.php from your old site to your new site.

Install over existing

Then, go to tiki-install.php and click the "upgrade" button, which will update the database. Tiki can read your previous db/local.php file and use this information. If the installer was previously locked (which it should be), you will need to unlock it by deleting db/lock

Alternative: Upgrading your database through shell

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8. Post tiki-install.php

At the end, proceed as usual to the Tiki site while disabling the tiki-install.php script.

9. Update the .htaccess file

Tiki ships with a _htaccess file. It needs to be renamed to .htaccess and replace the one from the previous version. If you made any customizations, you should redo them in the new file. See: Clean URLs

10. Test

What to expect as problems

• Changes of behavior
  • A feature was activated but no longer is (ex. default behavior has changed). You need to go to the admin panel and activate it.
• Bugs
  • Each Tiki version brings loads of new features. However, sometimes, enhancements can bring new bugs as well
• If you customized your themes, they may come out weird
  • You should plan a bit of time to re-integrate your customizations in the new theme.

Where to look

• Look in the release notes of your version for any specific things to look for, and to the documentation pages of each new release (i.e. Tiki2, Tiki3, Tiki4, ...)

What to do

• If you need help, visit Tiki chat room Irc or forums
• If you found a bug, please report it (and fix if you can!) at http://dev.tikiwiki.org

10.1. Check your content

Check if your new web site contains everything from the old website.

10.2. Check that the features you used to use are still turned on.

More specifically, structures, search, individual plugins, and some other features may have to be activated in the admin panel.

10.3. Revise potentially unsafe plugin calls and approve or reject them

Usage of potentially unsafe wiki plugins has to be validated by users with the new permissions related to approve plugins. This way, any usre can make any attempt to use potentially any plugin, including iframe, dbreport, tag, sql, snarf, regex... which would need to be validated by some trusted users/editors/admins later on in order to approve or reject them.

A list of plugin calls pending revision can be found at any time here: tiki-plugins.php

11. Upgrade your Theme

For a more detailed description, read Styles and Themes

Further help?

If you need further instructions, ask in IRC or in the forums, and please, come back here and upgrade the documentation with what you learned. This is a way for you to help and make it easier for new users .

• Upgrade trunk
• Upgrade 3.x to 3.latest
• Upgrade 2.x to 3.x
• Upgrade 1.9.x to 2.x
• Upgrade 1.9.x to 1.9.y
• Upgrade 1.8.x to 1.9.y
• Upgrade 1.7 to 1.8
• Upgrade
• Manual upgrade

• Update
• Update Tiki
• Upgrade Tiki

Notes for advanced users

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