Practical Guide Upgrade Joomla 2.5 to Joomla 3.x

[leolam]

a 'blank' Joomla 2.5.17 site can be upgraded without any issues directly to J 3.2.1 with the Joomla upgrade component found in the Administrator backend

Leo

[Webdongle]

There are still a few users reporting the error with the 'Remember me' is causing update/upgrade problems.

[leolam]

There are still a few users reporting the error with the 'Remember me' is causing update/upgrade problems.

What has that to do with this guidance?

[Webdongle]

Because a user stated they still had problems and you stated that "a 'blank' Joomla 2.5.17 site can be upgraded without any issues directly to J 3.2.1 with the Joomla upgrade component found in the Administrator backend". My post was to conform that there are others still having problems. That does not negate the value of the advice you have given but it is related to the thread in that it is regarding upgrading Joomla 2.5 to Joomla 3.x.

[leolam]

@ Kevin, Remember me is a separate issue and has no influence on the migration process me think?

Leo

[Webdongle]

Remember me is a separate issue and has no influence on the migration process me think?

There have been some failed updates with error showing in remember.php. When the site was restored with a backup and 'Remember me' plugin disabled then the update went smoothly.

It is a separate issue but it does affect some updates/migrations.

It is unknown why the 'Fatal error: Call to a member function isAdmin() on a non-object in /home/fruitof/public_html/plugins/system/remember.php on line 48' is encountered on some updates/migrations and not others but it does happen.

[wonderland]

Hello,

I just wanted to thank everyone in this topic, because it helped me to update my site to J3.

I've triead a LOT of times to update, but after reading this topic I could finally succeed.

Especially I must thank Webdongle for suggesting disabling remember me plugin. Should I enable it again after update?

Unfortunately there are few problems after update, and I was hoping you could help me.

Frontend of the site works without problems. But there are 2 problems with administration panel.

1.After logging in administration panel (administrator/index.php) I get blank page and this error (error is visible because I have php errors turned on) Fatal error: Class FOFModel cannot extend from interface JModel in E:\wamp\www\site1\libraries\fof\model.php on line 21

I tried following these steps - http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=710&t=832024 (Post 5), but that didn't help.

Also when I enter url manually, for example "administrator/index.php?option=com_installer&view=manage" I can freely navigate administrator panel and use Joomla! 3

2. When I go to Components->Post-installation messages I get this error - Call to protected method JRequest::_cleanVar() from context 'FOFInput' in E:\wamp\www\site1\libraries\fof\input.php on line 39

[Webdongle]

... Fatal error: Class FOFModel cannot extend from interface JModel in E:\wamp\www\site1\libraries\fof\model.php on line 21

...

You have tried to install a very old FOF-based component which was designed for Joomla! 1.5 only. This screwed up your installation. You should be able to easily fix it by doing the following steps in the order specified:

Delete the libraries/fof directory from your site
Download FOF 2.1.1
Extract the ZIP file locally
Upload the fof directory you extracted into your site's libraries directory Assuming that the older component you installed isn't using a private copy of FOF 1.x and loading it via a plugin you should get access to your site. Otherwise you will have to determine which plugin is trying to load the very old FOF version and delete it from your site.

https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/pull/2519

[wonderland]

Thank you for replying so fast!

I actually stated in my post that I already tried doing that but that didn't help. I can verify that I have fof 2.1.1

I just disabled every single plugin, but this error is still present.

[alexwalker]

My problem is that I cannot see Joomla Update in Components and the site is running Joomla 2.5.18
Any ideas ?

[nzampella]

My problem is that I cannot see Joomla Update in Components and the site is running Joomla 2.5.18
Any ideas ?

May be a dumb idea, but head to Extension Manager -> Discover, and click on the DISCOVER button. It may show up there, and you can install it.

[michael_d]

Hi

Thanks for this guide. This helped me upgrade few of my sites to joomla 3.

[bettyorganero]

Hello,
I want to know if I upgrade my website to joomla 3.0 we need to change the template or my joomla template 2.5 can works fine on joomla 3.0.

Thank you

[sovainfo]

See Step 2 in the first post of this thread. So, the answer to your question is:
No, there are templates that can run on both 2.5 and 3. When you are using such a template there is no need to change it.

[tandali]

Trying to upgrade Joomla 2.5.14 to latest Joomla 3.x. Have a backup and already setup "Short Term Support STS". Made sure allow_url_fopen = on and allow_url_include= off. But still not getting the update. Says I already have the latest version. Anyone have any ideas on this issue?

[CorinnaM]

Leo, thank you for this wonderful guidance! It made life so much easier.

However, I still encountered the white screen of death after upgrading, but it was solved by renaming the remember.php file, as suggested elsewhere.

Everything works fine now.

Thanks again, Leo, for taking the time and trouble to compose these guidelines! Much apprechated.

[gnutello]

Hi there,
is still working this guidance with j3.2.3? I'm trying to upgrade from j2.5 to j3.2.3 in a local installation, I have followed all the instructions and removed all the components. I setup "Short Term Support STS" but this issue happens: Error: invalid login.
Any suggestions are appreciated
Thank you

[dkhc3]

Did you Extension manager=>Update click button Clear cache, Find Updates?

This was the solution for me.
Thank You sovainfo.

[OldMoldy]

Trying to upgrade from Joomla 2.5.17 to 3.x and have deleted obviously incompatible extensions and see the process start to unpack through 87% [img]

Update_error0.JPG

[/img]

After a few seconds, get the next error message[img]

Update_error1.JPG

[/img]

After that point, the site is no longer functional...any ideas?

[OldMoldy]

Tried an alternative approach...upgraded Joomla 2.5.17 to 2.5.19 and then tried to manually update after retrieving the update file...got the following screen:

[img]

Update_error2.JPG

[/img]

...either way, the site becomes non-functional

[dorsa]

Trying to upgrade Joomla 2.5.14 to latest Joomla 3.x. Have a backup and already setup "Short Term Support STS". Made sure allow_url_fopen = on and allow_url_include= off. But still not getting the update. Says I already have the latest version. Anyone have any ideas on this issue?

Using STS was no good, going to extension upload was no good, so went the classic way of uploading Joomla 3 stable package zip to replace Joomla 2.5 files.
But before doing that, I disabled every non-core Joomla plugin and set a default Joomla template before dropping the upgrade files. After that, the dashboard was looking messed up, so went to Extensions manager > Manage > and used "Discover" + "Database".
Changed the admin template to a Joomla 3 template. And now everything seems to be back to normal, but there seems a long way to updating plugins/components.
STS and extension upload to upgrade is still not working.. so I guess I'm stuck with manual upgrade.

[secrets]

A great rule to follow; don't rely on extensions to backup your website period. Do manual database and website root backups.

I think the backup documentation is missing some vital information.

[sarnico]

Thank you very much Leo. I just did it!

[nzampella]

A great rule to follow; don't rely on extensions to backup your website period. Do manual database and website root backups.

I think the backup documentation is missing some vital information.

This is a ridiculous assumption, and lousy advice. Using Akeeba Backup to do site backups is very easy, and it provides a way to load or reload a site using the Kickstart.php script.

[rich-hi-rich]

i had similar issue showing blank page for both backend and frontend and do not know what is the reason.

[kardinol]

Trying to upgrade Joomla 2.5.14 to latest Joomla 3.x. Have a backup and already setup "Short Term Support STS". Made sure allow_url_fopen = on and allow_url_include= off. But still not getting the update. Says I already have the latest version. Anyone have any ideas on this issue?

Try the button "Purge cache", clear your browser’s cache, and check again for an update.
Having said that, it is discouraged to do so in most cases:

you should not upgrade from Joomla 2.5 to Joomla 3.x unless you are certain that all of your additionally installed extensions (from third party developers), especially templates, are Joomla 3.x ready or have a Joomla 3.x version that you can upgrade to.

[NathanHawks]

@Leo,

Great guide! Something to consider adding to it: checking for/dealing with template overrides. I assume they should be:

1. disabled (e.g. renamed to html-old)
2. re-implemented using fresh 3.x templates, using the contents of html-old as a basis)

[nyocca]

Thank you for your wise, succinct and very correct advice, as I can see you provided here and elsewhere. Your advice is at least as accurate as any other 2.5 - 3.x advice I have seen. I also fortunately checked on my Rockettheme template's compatibility with J3.0, 3.1, 3.2 and perhaps 3.3. From the sparse compatibility information I could gleen from their forum, I decided to upgrade 2.5.20 to 3.2.4 (rather than to 3.3.0), which works with my Halcyon template updated. My main issues seem to be the clumsy way some of the extensions do not retain tables or customizations for the post Joomla upgrade extension upgrade. I am glad I FTP'd onto my local disk a complete snapshot of the joomla root directory and subdirectories which may be a workable tool for comparing old and new and patching little issues. At night I will turn on the Max error reporting, study its reports and try to guess at the best solution. Naturally, when I hit a dead end, I would restore an Akeeba Backup I had made (and I made them more frequently as I got closer to upgrading). Akeeba is phenomenal, never uninstall it (good luck finding this in the documentation, as good as it is) unless you copy the backups to an off-site directory first. Joomla 2.5-3 so far has been an adventure with reasonable opportunities at success with trial and error at every turn (backup often!!!!).

[leolam]

@Leo,

Great guide! Something to consider adding to it: checking for/dealing with template overrides. I assume they should be:

1. disabled (e.g. renamed to html-old)
2. re-implemented using fresh 3.x templates, using the contents of html-old as a basis)

Nate you have somehow a point but the template overrides are per default in the template folder (html) which is an extension. So if the extension (template) has 'custom' overrides (non-template) you have to a certain extend a point when these are overrides that change core certain functionality for your website (com_contact is often an example for that). If you have not made 'custom' overrides and and using template and site as is you do not have to backup the html-folder since your new J3.x compatible template will have its own html-overrides

Leo

[Adnet]

i dont know how it happend but joomls 3.1 was installed with out me asking it to do so,
and suddenly i have a broken site.
Is there a way to downgrade?
Thank you