New to managing existing Concrete site

Using Concrete / Help
1

Hi all,

I was just put in charge of managing a website that uses Concrete CMS. It seems like it has not been touched for years. The site is https://murphy-larsen.com/
I have experience with website design but little with coding and tech stuff, I typically use wordpress.

It seems that the website I am managing needs to be updated in some form? It is currently on version 8.1.0

The site says it is not connected to the “Concrete 5 Community”. I would like the option to install the theme but can’t seem to do so without being connected.

Is it required to update versions to connect to the Concrete community? If so how do I update the version on the site?

I am considering moving the website over to wordpress where I am more comfortable if ConcreteCMS is too complex.

Thanks for the help

2

  1. Make a backup of your site. Files and database.

  2. Download v8.5.12 as a zip.

Updating within v8 is fairly safe. Don’t even think of v9 until you have v8 updated and tested and you have more familiarity with the process and Concrete.

  1. You can make a manual update to v8.5.12 as per

You only need the/concrete directory from the update .zip. The rest can be discarded.

For stuff like this I prefer to use the Command Line method, and within step 5 of that do a directory swap, for example.
upload the new /concrete into /concrete_new
rename existing /concrete to /concrete_old
rename existing /concrete_new to /concrete

  1. Be prepared to revert by restoring files and database.

  2. Once tested, clean up by removing /concrete_old.

[edited, version is 8.5.12]

3

Thank you for the help!