Upgrading the OJS 2.4.3.0 to the latest version

Hi!

I am trying to upgrade the OJS 2.4.3.0 to the latest OJS version 3.3. For some reasons, previous manager haven’t done it on time. The main problem is that we can’t upgrade it. Is it because of the fact that this version 2.4.3.0 is too old and is no longer supported or there might be some other reasons?
Kindly assit me in resolving this issue.

Respectfully,
Meruyert.

Hi @Meruyert

You can definitely upgrade OJS 2.4.3 to 3.3, but you will need to do it in several steps. Because of some differences in user sessions and the database structure early on, the first step will be to upgrade to 2.4.8-5. From there you’ll have to upgrade to OJS 3.2.1-4 because there is no direct upgrade path from OJS 2.4 to 3.3. Once you are running 3.2.1-4 you can upgrade to 3.3.

Because you are currently using 2.4.3 you are most likely using PHP 5.6. That will need to be upgraded to PHP 7.3 or 7.4 before performing the upgrade because newer versions of OJS require it.

Finally, you may need to make changes to your database schema. Older versions of OJS allowed MySQL MyISAM tables, but OJS 3.3 requires InnoDB tables due to the new database schema using foreign keys.

This is all quite a lot, and you’ll probably need someone with systems administrator access to perform most of this. Please search our forums here as many or all of these topics have been covered in detail before.

Best
Jason

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Also, please make backups of your OJS directory, your files_dir directory, and your MySQL database before attempting any of this. If a step fails you will need to restore your content from these backups.

Best
Jason

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Hi Jason!

Thank you very much for your detailed explanation of all the steps and nuances.
Cheers! :bouquet:

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