Best way to update from a version to another between OJS3

Hi
My version is 3.1.1.4. and I am interested in updating to 3.2.1.2
I have noticed in this forum that when there are too many changes and updates between one version and another, there are always issues. What do you recommend me to do? Do I have to upgrade to intermediate versions before installing 3.2.1.2.? To which?

Thank you

Hello @Journals_UFT,

There shouldn’t be a need to upgrade to intermediate versions when upgrading from 3.1.1.4 to 3.2.1.2

The issues that users encounter when upgrading vary, and may occur to local configurations (e.g. code or theme customizations, database changes, server environments). So, it can be hard to account for every issue that may go wrong.

However, a few things you can do to ensure the upgrade process goes smoothly:

  1. Check the particular version’s release notes. For example, with 3.2 we’ve published this in a release notebook: https://pkp.sfu.ca/2020/02/11/release-notebook-for-ojs-omp-3-2-now-available/ (and will likely do with future major releases). You should review those changes and ensure that you’re okay with any feature changes that may affect how you use OJS.

  2. Try to ensure that you set aside some time for testing following an upgrade. You’ll likely want to create a backup to roll back to should your upgrade process fail for some reason. There are sometimes bug fixes and minor feature enhancements (such is the case with 3.2.1.2) or other measures put in place following a release, so you may wish to look at the Github repository for the particular branch that you’re upgrading to get a better sense of this.

More info can be found in our administration guide

Best regards,

Roger
Public Knowledge Project Staff

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If you are using mysql really double check the encoding setting of your database before doing the upgrade. We were deducing from our tables’ encoding that everything should work fine, but an upgrade to 3.2.* will create new tables that really depend on the database’s encoding.

The following is only applicable if all your tables are in one encoding and your database’s collation is different from that (we had tables with utf8 and database with latin-swedish):
In phpmyadmin you can see and change the setting of the database after selecting the database in question and then in Tab Operations look for heading Collation (leave “Change all table collations” unchecked).

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I really appreciate your advice, because I was wondering about the encoding issue. Thank you.

Thank you, Roger! I have a lot to study.