Moodle 2.6.x 3.2.x upgrade

It is that time again.  Upgrade the moodle!  Keep things current.  These are the results of my testing and preparation, so far.  I think I am ready.

Findings

First - if you are using WAMP, you have to upgrade to WAMP 25.  It has newer versions of PHP and MySQL, which moodle 2.7 requires.

Next - set up a RD server to practice those infrastructure upgrades someplace other than your live server.  Or, punt and us a moodle service provider

Next, practice updating the moodle in the RD instance too.  I did.  And discovered that you have to go from moodle 2.6.x - to 2.8.x BEFORE proceeding on to 3.x.  I had to do something very similar when going from 1.x to 2.x.  Some of the big updates are handled only once, so you CANT skip ever upgrade and expect all the changes in the previous versions to live in the latest version.  You dig?

I updated both of the moodle instances on my RD server, from 2.6 - 2.8 to 3.1.  Without any real issue.  Yea.

I also copied my old custom theme for each of the moodle instances from the old code base into the new one - in the theme folder, naturally.   You may have to visit the Notifications link in the moodle, to force a kickoff of the upgrade.

After running the Notifications and allowing moodle to do its thing, I checked in the available themes and there it was.

The end.

More findings. (10/21/16).

I started with our two least trafficed moodles - one has had no traffic for years.  I just keep it around for reasons like this and because it not cost us anything to leave it out in the wild.  No annual service fees like other LMSs - like say Blackboard. Both DB upgrades were problem free -

Steps to update the moodle DB

1. back up the DB before starting the upgrade - just in case.
2. download the latest moodle code, unzip it
3. browse to the moodle folder - remove the code - MINUS the config.php file.
1. select all the contents of the folder
2. unselect the config.php file
3. delete
4. copy the new code into the existing folder, 
5. browse the site while logged in as admincClick through the Upgrade screen, allowing the DB to be upgraded.

I notice the new themes and realized we should choose one of the 3.1 themes.  Two of my moodle customers have *customized themes, which means they are old and do not conform to best practices in 3.1.  Maybe the theme is fine, maybe a little tweaking of the css will allow you to keep the old custom theme - but - you should be choosing a 3.1 compatible theme and adapting it to your old theme.  There probably is not mush resistance sitting out there to leaving the old themes and adapting a new one anyway.

Steps to add new themes

download the theme from the plugins site
unzip the theme
copy the folder
browse on the moodle server/folder to the siteURL/theme
copy the theme folder