Upgrading from 8.5.15 to 9

Installation
1

What is the upgrade path from version 8.5.15 to the latest stable version of 9? I can’t find anywhere in the documentation that talks about what version can be skipped in the update process.

2

There is plenty in the forums, so please search back for detail on the below.

2 steps:

  1. Straight to the last 8.5.x
  2. straight to the last 9.x.x

Things that could trip you up on step 2:

Theme compatibility (v9 is based on a later version of bootstrap)
Addon compatibility (may not be available in v9)
Automated jobs.

Also, v9 is often associated with an update to php8.x. Usually best to update running php7.4 and sort out any errors, then when stable switch to php8.x

3

Thank you. That is very helpful. Will get all the custom blocks working on V9 with PHP 7.4 before upgrading to PHP 8 and dealing with incompatibility issues.

My only addins are cachewarmer, which is no longer available, and the theme. Everything else is using javascript.

With regard to theme compatibility. I thought I would be able to run a V8 theme on V9 by replacing boostrap 5 with bootstrap 3. A prior post indicated I would need to create an overide CSS to handle some issues with CMS editting tools. Is that true?

Doing this on a development server so I have time to make adjustments.

4

Have you got this back to front? Edit dialogues designed for BS3 may need to be updated to look good with BS5, so replacing BS3 classes with BS5 classes.

Front end, a BS3 theme can work as long as it is properly namespaced within .ccm-page.

v9 BS5 themes are usually built on Concrete Bedrock with SASS, which has some structural differences from v8 and LESS.

If your theme is not too ‘unique’, you may find it easier to switch to an already built for v9 theme.

5

John, thank you for setting me straight. I will again look at available templates for V9. Hopefully there are more options than the last time I looked.

For anyone reading this there are two posts on this issue:

Evan Cooper’s good explanation of how to use .ccm-page: Elemental theme fix top navbar

Good explanation of how to correct small font size issues in Concrete interface: