Error when trying to update ConcreteCMS

Using Concrete / Help
1

Hello! Thank you in advance for any advice provided.

I am seemingly unable to update ConcreteCMS. I’ve tried three times now to update from my current version (stated below) to version 9.3.3.

All 3 times, I got a red banner saying, “An error occurred while downloading the package.”

ConcreteCMS Screenshot
ConcreteCMS Screenshot1554×388 20.9 KB

I’ve tried updating in incognito Chrome, just to make sure it’s not perhaps an extension causing this. But it failed there too.

I am using ConcreteCMS version 8.5.4 and PHP version 7.2.34.

Does anyone know how to fix this update issue?

Update: I tried to download the update a fourth time, and that time, for reasons unknown, it fortunately downloaded.

I then clicked “install” and got told my PHP version was too old.

I logged into cPanel and used the “Select PHP Version” tool to update my PHP version to the latest available (8.3).

I then tried to install the update again, and it installed successfully! Yay! :grin:

2

There could be lots of reasons for this to fail, such as not having the right PHP extensions enabled (zip comes to mind), or maybe not having curl available on your server.

But for major upgrades, it’s often recommended to do this manually.
You want to do this as two update steps, the first to get your site up to the latest V8, so version 8.5.18, then as a second step go to v9, so 9.3.3. This often works better than trying to go from some earlier version all the way up to the latest V9.

The process is:

  • do a full backup of your site first (database and all files)
  • turn off all caching on your site
  • make sure you are running on PHP7.4, and if you can adjust it, set your PHP timeout to a few minutes
  • download a V8 release zip, extract from that the concrete folder, rename it to something like concrete_new, zip that up and upload and unzip that on your server
  • delete from /application/config the update.php if it exists
  • rename your existing concrete directory to something like concrete_old, and the new one you just uploaded to concrete
  • refresh your home page. This might take a while, but let it process.
  • Once up and running, check that everything is working right, then repeat the process but upload the concrete folder from the V9 download
  • Then try changing your PHP to run PHP8.1 or PHP8.2

There’s a page about it here

The issues you might hit going up a major version are likely to be PHP version related errors with add-on or themes. So you may need to find updates, or make manual fixes, or leave it on PHP7.4

It’s one of those processes that once you’ve done it a few times and know what to look for it’s quite straightforward. But if you’re not technical, you might want to engage a developer on here to do it for you.

I’ve done around 25, V8 (and earlier) upgrades to V9 over the last few months. What I’ve done though is do that process completely locally first, to test it out and work out what needs to be updated. Then I repeat it on the live (or copy in my working copy) with more confidence.

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