Upgrading DotNetNuke 3.x to 4.x

Mariette from SmallBizServer.net has posted a great post in the ventrian forums about upgrading DotNetNuke 3.x to 4.x.

Here is an excerpt from the post:-

OK, this was not as difficult as it looked like. http://dev.smallbizserver.net is running DNN 4.02 on .Net 2.0 now.

The steps I made:

1. Create a new application pool and call it DNN4.
2. Create a new site in IIS and call it DNN4. Set the site to use ASP.Net 2.0 and make sure it runs the application pool you just created. This is very important because you cannot run .Net 1.1 and .Net 2.0 in the same application pool.
3. Download the install package for DNN 4.0
4. Unzip the package into the folder where you want your site should be (same folder as you set in IIS when you created the DDN4 site)
5. Create a new database and call it DNN4.
6. Assign the same admin as dbowner as you use in the production site.
7. Rename the release.config to web.config and edit the connection strings so that they point to your SQL server and database. I still use SQL 2000 so I had to comment out the SQL Express strings. Do not point the connection strings to your production database.
8. If you have done this locally browse to your site at http://localhost or as I did to the dev site.
9. If everything is OK the install routine will start and a blank new DNN 4.0 site is created.
10. Install all modules you use on your production site and be sure to check the version. Also check if the module is made to run for DNN 4.0. In the case of Active Forums you need to install the DNN 4.0 version. I created a little Excel sheet with all the modules I run on the production site and checked all versions. You should do the same!

Now we have a blank DNN 4.0 site that should run without any errors. The next steps are for copying data from your production database to another new database in SQL. Here we go:

1. In SQL create a database with the name DNN4Beta.
2. Assign the same admin as dbowner as you use in the production site.
3. And now something VERY VERY important comes. You must match the machineKey validationKey and the  decryptionKey to the values from the production site web.config. If you fail to do this you will not be able to logon to your site anymore. If you make this mistake on your production site you will need to restore your database.
4. Change the connection strings so that they point to your SQL server and database. In this case the database name will be DDN4Beta.
5. Now we need to import data from the production database into DDN4Beta. Use SQL Server Manager for this.
6. Copy all data from the production Portals folder to the DNN4 Portals folder.
7. Browse to http://localhost or as I did to the dev site. You will see that DNN will upgrade your database to version 4.02.

I have read to many failures in forums.asp.net and therefor I believed upgrading was a problem. It seems that those people don't really read the documention that comes with DNN.

OK, this is upgrading DNN 3.2.2 to DNN 4.02 in a nutshell. Enjoy...

You can read the full thread here. (Thanks Mariette!)