Is there a best of the best process?

[davidsmtol]

Greetings

With 2.5.x coming to end of life at the end of the year, I need to move the last of my websites (about 7) to Joomla 3.0. I admittedly have been holding off with my method to try and go directly to 3.5 when it was available. However the timeline of releases does not really make that feasible anymore.

Several of the sites I have upgraded had less then smooth results with several having white screens that needed correction after the update. Before I go into my final phase of upgrades I wanted to make sure I was using the best method to reduce the risk of troublesome updates.

I have reviewed some videos on siteground:
http://www.siteground.com/tutorials/joo ... o-joomla3/
and the excellent post here: http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=710&t=793171

My questions for the community is: Is this the "gold standard" method of upgrading from 2.5 to 3.x?

Seems pretty clear that preparation is the key but I was wondering if there was any other "best of the best" checklists that anyone has had success using.

Alternatively, are there any extensions that anyone has used such as those listed in the migration category. http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions ... -migration

Also, I understand that Akeeba was one of the causal applications that corrupted some of the early updates. IS this still the case? Should I uninstall this extension before upgrading?

Thanks to all that respond constructively in advance.
David

[jackrabbit]

The 'gold standard' is SPTransfer. A smooth transition from J2.5 to 3.x. See http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions ... tion/15609

Direct URL http://cyend.com/extensions/extensions/ ... p-transfer

[DaveOzric]

I had trouble with NoNumbers and it always ruined my upgrade. The developer gave some reason why that made little sense. So I uninstall that now before I upgrade any site.

Last upgrade I did a few days ago was an upgraded version starting from 1.6 I believe. I used SPUpgrade to move from 1.5 back when. jackrabbit is correct about the gold standard. It's the best.

Anyway I had problems with some database files that needed to be deleted to remove the warning in the Extension Manager Database tab in the backend. I also ended up installing the whole package over the upgrade to fix some other odd behavior. It's a white knuckle ride for sure.

[jackrabbit]

Just to add also that with the SPTransfer, there is no need to do all that time wasting 'backup' as suggested in other posts because it does not change anything in your current 2.5 installation. It simply copies, modify and write to the new database where J3.x is installed. All while you rip into a Vegemite sandwich.

[davidsmtol]

Thanks! I will check out SPTransfer

[davidsmtol]

Just wanted to follow up and say thanks for the advice. I have used SPTransfer now on 6 sites and have worked out a process that works pretty well for me.

Thanks for the advice.