This is a Basic Upgrade Guide for the Blog Engine.Net blogging system on the DotNet Asp.Net 2.0 platform. This guide covers the most basic upgrade options in detail, notes on upgrading with Extra Features such as if you keep your Data in a Database or if you have custom Widgets or Themes are covered at the end. This tutorial provides a starting point for the upgrade even if you have more advanced set ups, it's good to get your basic data saved and upgraded before moving on to upgrading the other features.

How Upgrading Blog Engine .Net Works

To upgrade the Blog Engine .Net blog platform you just copy over the files from the new Blog Engine .Net Release to your Public Facing Internet Web Folder that serves your blog web site. But to keep all your data, blog posts, pages, users, and so forth you have to copy over that information from the App_Data folder of the older site if you use the default setting of saving this data in XML files. Notes about upgrading if you use a database instead of xml files is given at the end of this tutorial.

So the first step is to copy over your old site to your local machine, this way you have a back up of everything and can do the upgrade locally making sure everything works right before letting it go live on the Web.

Set up a local folder to store your old Blog Engine .Net files in. For example, create a folder named Web Sites in your My Documents folder then create a folder with the name of your blog web site in that folder. Inside that folder create a folder with the release number of Blog Engine .Net that your old site was using and another folder with the release number of the new updated Blog Engine .Net you are upgrading to.

Now connect to your Web Site folder, where you manage your web files through, either through FTP or a Control Panel or how ever you manage your site files. Then copy over your Blog Engine .Net files into the folder named with the older release you are upgrading from.

In the folder named after the new release version, unzip the new Blog Engine .Net files into that folder. Make sure you put the Web release files here not the Full Source solution files.

Transfer over your old Data to the new Blog Engine .Net Site

The important stuff to copy over to the new Blog Engine .Net site is your data, which means your old posts, pages, users, and so forth. To do this you need to copy over the files that exist in the App_Data folder of the old site. The tricky part is knowing exactly what each file stands for, how it is structured, and how it fits in the scheme of the new Blog Engine .Net release you are upgrading to. What you have to do is first know what the files and folders in the App_Data folder stand for then open them up for both the old and new Blog Engine .Net sites and compare them.

The pages and posts folders are safe to delete in the new site and copy over from the old site as is. For the rest of the xml files it's important that you open each of them from each site, the old and new, and do a side by side comparison. Copy over the data from the older version of the xml file for the settings you want to keep in the new upgraded set up. Also make note of any xml elements that are new in the new version and missing from the old version, these are the new upgraded settings you are upgrading to. These files are the settings you manage from your Admin Manage Settings panel of your Blog Engine .Net site.

Here's an explanation of what the files mean so you have an idea of what you are setting up when you copy over data between these files.

• blogroll.xml - These are the sites you have listed in your Blog Roll via the Admin Settings Panel.
• categories.xml - These are your blog's categories you set up via the Admin Settings Panel.
• newsletter, pingservices, roles are all xml files that govern those items that you set up via your Admin Settings Panel.
• users.xml - This is where your users and corresponding hashed passwords are stored, so it's important to keep this data consistent with your old site so you can log in with your old password and user name.
• settings.xml - This is the biggest file to check each element on to make sure you carry over your old settings from your blog to the new one, but making sure you don't erase or mess up the new settings added with the new release that are missing from your older blog site. So check the differences between the old and new blog sites here and make sure you see each element and the settings for each, knowing what web site setting they govern. Copy over the ones you want to keep and note the new ones in the newer version.

Leave the stopwords.txt file the same in the newer site unless you added other words from the old site you want to keep, in which case you can copy those words over. These are stop words that won't be counted when people type them in on your blog's Search feature.

Putting it up on your Live Web Site

Now go back to your Web Site folder where you manage your web site files for your blog and delete all the the Blog Engine .Net files and folders, then upload the files and folders from your new Blog Engine .Net folder on your local computer that you just edited and transfered your old pages, posts, and settings to.

After that load your blog web site in a browser, check that everything went OK, check that all your old pages and posts made it over to the new Blog Engine .Net version, then log in with your old Admin account username and password to make sure that's done right. Check out the new Settings Panel and make any adjustments to your site that you need after checking that your old settings also transfered over correctly.

A must for the new Blog Engine .Net set up starting with version 1.6 is to make sure you set up your Comment Spam settings. Comment Spam was a big problem with Blog Engine .Net before but these new features starting with version 1.6 cut that down to almost nothing. To learn how to set up Comment Spam filters check out the Tutorial to Set up Comment Spam Filtering in Blog Engine .Net

Notes on extra Blog Engine .Net Upgrade Items

If you are using a database to store your Blog Engine .Net Data there is a setup folder in the main Blog Engine .Net Web folder, in there you'll see a general Read Me file and within folders for different database types a specific Read Me file along with scripts for each type of database supported by Blog Engine .Net. Read those Read Me files and follow the directions using the provided scripts to update your Blog Engine .Net blog data instead of what was detailed above in regard to the xml files in the App_Data folder. Make sure you have a back up of your old database files before you upgrade it, should you need to restore back the old site due to troubleshooting issues.

Any Widgets you've added to your old blog you'll have to copy over into the widgets folder of the new Blog Engine version you are upgrading to.

If you've created a new FavIcon for your site and copied over the pic.ico file and any other image files you've added to the pic folder of your old site, copy them over to the new Blog Engine .Net site as well.

If you have any custom themes you have to check out any CSS modifications in the new version of Blog Engine .Net this is listed in the change log of the New release on the Blog Engine .Net main site. Make sure your custom themes conform to the new CSS changes noted in the Blog Engine .Net Release Notes after you copy them over to your themes folder.

If you have installed any custom Controls or Extensions make sure they are compatible with the new version of Blog Engine .Net and then copy them over to the new site before you upload it.

Having a Local IIS on your Development Computer to Test with

It's a good idea to have a local copy of IIS server on your local computer to run your new Blog Engine .Net sites off of and see if there any issues. Test your set up in there and make any adjustments before uploading it all to your live Internet site.

Lastly, if you have any trouble and you need to go back to your old set up, just delete your new upgraded site that doesn't work and upload the old site you have backed up on your local computer. That takes care of any worse care senarios. Run the upgraded site on your local IIS and work out any troubleshooting steps there before uploading that to your live site. If it works fine in your local IIS but not on your live web server, then you should note the differences between those two set ups and then narrow it down from that list to the problem. You can use the Community Forum for Blog Engine .Net to ask questions and also check out the Troubleshooting documentation. After that, feel free to post any comments or questions here in these comments.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial about Upgrading Blog Engine .Net blogging system for the Asp.Net web platform, and that it helps you set up a nice online blogging environment. Please help other people who may need this information by posting this link to this tutorial where you can on the Web. Link to this tutorial - <a href="http://www.web-host-site.com/post/upgrade-blog-engine-dotnet.aspx" title="Learn to Upgrade Blog Engine .Net in Detail">Comprehensive look at Upgrading the Blog Engine .Net blogging system for ASP.Net</a>