As you might know I have been working on the UserGroup.tv website, and I am using the new free Open Source Content Management System from Microsoft, Orchard (http://www.orchardproject.net). Noticed the other day that they have released version 1.2 and I was running 1.1, I thought to myself, self I should upgrade.
1) First things first, time to back up my local environment. I keep a copy of the site running on my laptop. I use WebMatrix with IIS Express and a copy of SQL Server running locally to develop. So before doing anything I made a backup of my local database, and the folder with my project in it.
2) Next it was time to backup the production site, my hosting company has a button to create a backup of the production db so I used it. Then copied that backup down locally. Then just to make sure that my production environment and my dev environment were in sync, I downloaded the production site overlaying my local copy. Restored the production database locally, and updated the connection string in my local copy of Orchard to point at the new database (look in the App_Data/Sites/Default/Settings.txt folder).
3) Ok, now that I am sure I got a copy of my production site running locally without any issues it is time to pull the trigger. I downloaded the latest copy of Orchard, unblocked the zip file, unzipped it into my local folder that contained the copy of my production code.
4) Now time to test, open WebMatrix fire up IIS Express and ensure that everything is working fine.
5) For me everything worked out of the box, no issues, time to go to production!
6) Now I just need to FTP up the files (without the App_Data folder) to my production site, and test everything one more time.
Total time to complete the upgrade, eat breakfast, and write this article 30 min. #winner