Keeping forum live through upgrade?

[ski diva]

I want to upgrade from 3.5.4, but I'm absolutely terrified I'm going to screw it up.

Is there a way to do this without closing or taking down my current forum; I'd like to get everything squared away -- all my mods in place, etc. -- before I take the upgraded forum live.

Keeping this in mind, could I create a duplicate forum that would run on 3.6.5, while still having my forum available and running on 3.5.4, then switch to the 3.6.5 forum whenever it's ready? How would I do this?

[zappsan]

I don't recommend doing a live upgrade, it might also be annoying for people, since you might have to change some things during the process.

The duplicate forum idea wouldn't work, since the database of the 3.6.5 forum and the one of your current forum aren't the same, the structure has changed.

You could create a testboard, import your current database and try out the upgrade to make sure it actually works.

You could also simply backup your database before the upgrade, in case something goes wrong, just use the backup and try again.

You shouldn't be too worried about upgrading, i've never encountered any problems when doing so.

[ski diva]

Thanks. So this means I can do what I'd hoped to do -- which is to create a dummy board with the new software, add in all of my various mods and so on, test it with a recent database to be sure it all works, and then import the latest database and admit users -- right?