Karl Kopp

In my previous post I stepped through the process of upgrading your base Umbraco 4.0.x build to the latest 4.5.x build. At the bottom, I noted I would write a post about how to update your XSLT. I expected to write a big post with lots of examples. Turns out, there is only one thing you need to know to successfully move to Umbraco 4.5.x and that one thing is…

Blackpoint DK Umbraco XSLT conversion tool

That's all :) Its a great online tool that helps do the leg work of moving to the new XML schema, and the results I've had to date have been really solid. Try it, and let me know if you have any issues - keen to see what other people experiences are…

I have seen a few people ask for details on how to upgrade Umbraco 4.0.x to 4.5.x and since I was doing a site here at Next Digital, I thought I would document a quick 'how-to' on how to get this done.

1. Start by downloading the correct version of Umbraco 4.5.x (I used the .NET 3.5 version of 4.5.1). Note: If you extract the files using the Window's built in compression tool, you will need to 'UNBLOCK' the ZIP file from the zip files properties dialog before extracting, otherwise your installation may not include all the required files.
2. Backup your existing Umbraco site and database. I just did a dump of the database, and zipped up all the files in my webroot folder.
3. I then copied the App_Browsers, App_Data, bin, install, umbraco and umbraco_client folders over the existing folders (in my 4.0.x build, there was no existing App_Data folder).
4. Rename your existing web.config to web.config.old and copy over the new web.config
5. Open the new web.config and copy all the settings in <appSettings> from your old web.config file. Note: there is a new config setting for umbracoContentXMLUseLocalTemp that doesn't exist in the old config. Make sure to keep this setting. Also copy over the existing paths for the umbracoReservedUrls, umbracoReservedPaths, umbracoContentXML, umbracoStorageDirectory and umbracoPath as they now start with a tilda (~).
6. In the web.config, update the <mailSettings> settings if you use a custom SMTP server.
7. Modify the 2 membership providers (umbracoMembershipProvider and UsersMembershipProvider) in the web.config and remove the passwordFormat="Hashed" from both as the password in the existing database is not hashed.
8. From the /config directory, copy over the new config files (scripting.config, ClientDependency.config, Examine.config, ExamineSettings.config)
9. In the xsltExtensions.config file, remove the /bin/ directory from the assembly name, this is no longer required.
10. Now open the site homepage in a browser and Umbraco should take you to the installation screens. Step through the process and your Umbraco is now up to date with the 4.5.1 build!!

Update 1 (28/07/2010)

A few more updates that may be required are listed below:

1. In the umbracoSettings.config, you should add to your existing file the following keys under the content node: PreviewBadge (adds the new preview badge to pages that are previewed), UmbracoLibraryCacheDuration (will allow media and member data to be cached) and if you want to use some new packages you will need to add UseLegacyXmlSchema = false (you will need to update the XSLT if you do this). 
2. Also in umbracoSettings, you will need to add the <help> section to enable the new help.

This will update the core of your Umbraco build, but there will be a few final steps. You will need to:

• Update all your XSLT to the new format. I'll do another post with some examples later.
• Update any packages you may use to the latest version (wish there was an easy updater for Umbraco like WordPress ;).

We recently had a situation where we had a client site that was built in Umbraco perform very poorly. I was asked to take a look, and the first thing I did was to use the umbdebugshowtrace=true query string to see what controls or XSLT were performing badly. To my surprise, everything seemed normal, the the pages were generated within 200ms.

So I opened up Charles Web Proxy, and watched a few requests. I then noticed that the image requests were taking AGES when we were using ImageGen. Digging a bit deeper, I noticed that on the server, every time a request was made for an image that used ImageGen, the CPU would spike to 100% for a few seconds then drop. Strange.

I logged on to the server, and found the cached directory thinking that the cache files weren't being written due to a permission problem. Explorer waited. and waited. and crashed! So I jumped on to our.umbraco.org and found this post about a bug in ImageGen. It seems that the cache files weren't being deleted or reused, so we had millions of files written to the cached directory!

I jumped to a command prompt, ran 'rd /s cached', waited 45 minutes (!), updated the DLL and ASHX files from the patch available here, and everything seems to be back to normal with CPU load well below 10%.

Was logging on to my AFL Dreamteam site last night (http://afl.virtualsports.com.au), and noticed that the username and password are passed as clear text in the query string! Easily picked up in any proxies / reverse proxies as well as browser histories! Given the competition has prizes, I'm sure there is a duty of care the the AFL or Telstra (their online service provider) have to protect this information. The technology to do so has existed since Feb 1995!!

I'm also sure that the body responsible for giving out permits needs a confirmation of data security and integrity completed as well. The AFL surely fail in this regard!

PS - the links to Dreamteam don't even work on the front page of the AFL.com.au we site.

Been a fan of WordPress for a while now, and eventually managed to get a day off and create a new site for Ducale Coffee. Check it out, keen to get any feedback from the WP pro's :)

I am surprised it wasn't there from day 0, but Google has eventually added email support to Google Sync - the Exchange ActiveSync compatible syncing framework.

One gotcha - you need to enable it in the settings of your iPhone. Go to Settings, Mail Contacts Calendars, and select the Google Sync profile to enable Mail. Previously mail could only be synced using a separate, non-push enabled profile. Very nice :)

Was sent this useful site this morning by Mark, the Next Digital DM&M Director and thought I would share:

http://browsershots.org

It a great way to get a bunch of screenshot of different operating systems and browser combinations. We have a large test team, but this is a nice, quick way to test on far more platforms than we have access too :)

Nuff Ced!

If you don't understand, you never will.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=recursion

Through months of speculation, Microsoft has just announced that Windows 7 RTM milestone has just been signed off:

http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/07/22/our-next-engineering-milestone-rtm.aspx

I'm a huge fan of Win7, and have been since the beta. Very happy with the RC, so will be interesting to see what polish this RTM release adds.