Upgrading

Usually an update or upgrade your SilverStripe installation just means overwriting files and updating your database-schema.

See our upgrade notes and changelogs for release-specific information.

Process

Check if any modules (e.g. blog or forum) in your installation are compatible and need to be upgraded as well
Backup your database content
Backup your webroot files
Download the new release and uncompress it to a temporary folder
Leave custom folders like mysite or themes in place.
Identify system folders in your webroot (cms, framework, sapphire and any additional modules).
Delete existing system folders (or move them outside of your webroot)
Extract and replace system folders from your download (Deleting instead of "copying over" existing folders ensures that files removed from the new SilverStripe release are not persisting in your installation)
Visit http://yoursite.com/dev/build/?flush=1 to rebuild the website database
Check if you need to adapt your code to changed PHP APIs
Check if you have overwritten any core templates or styles which might need an update
See common-problems for a list of likely mistakes that could happen during an upgrade.

Never update a website on the live server without trying it on a development copy first.

How easy will it be to update my project? It's a fair question, and sometimes a difficult one to answer.

"Micro" releases (x.y.z) are explicitly backwards compatible, "minor" and "major" releases can deprecate features and change APIs (see our [/misc/release-process](release process) for details)
If you've made custom branches of SilverStripe core, or any thirdparty module, it's going to be harder to upgrade.
The more custom features you have, the harder it will be to upgrade. You will have to re-test all of those features, and adapt to API changes in core.
Customisations of a well defined type - such as custom page types or custom blog widgets - are going to be easier to upgrade than customisations that modify deep system internals like rewriting SQL queries.