Upgrade to a New Revision - Joomla - CiviCRM Documentation

CiviCRM is a quickly evolving project. We often distribute revisions of the same version to fix bugs, improve performance, or meet specific needs in the community. These are the steps for upgrading an existing site to a newer revision of the same version.

Versions and Revisions
CiviCRM uses a three part numbering system for versions and revisions:

Versions are indicated by the first two numbers.
2.1.x indicates some revision of version 2.1

Revisions are indicated by the number after the second decimal point.
2.1.0 is the first revision of version 2.1

This Procedure is NOT for Version Upgrades
Use this procedure to upgrade your site from one revision to another (within the same version). For example, upgrading from 2.0.2 to 2.0.3.

Upgrading to a new VERSION of CiviCRM (i.e. from v1.9 to v2.0.0) generally will involve database and upgrades in addition to downloading new code. Do NOT use this procedure for version upgrades - specific procedures will be documented with each new version release.

This Procedure is for Joomla! sites only
For Drupal sites, please check Upgrade to a New Revision - Drupal.

Upgrade a Copy of Your Site First and Make a Complete Backup
We strongly recommend that you do a test run on a test server before trying this on a production site. In any case, you should create a full backup of the installed civicrm directory tree and civicrm database before beginning the upgrade process.

Make a copy of your website and your database and ensure that it is a valid working copy by logging in to the Administrator site and navigating to several CiviCRM pages. For simplicity make sure you have easy access to both copies of civicrm.settings.php as you will need to reference them later.
Login to your Joomla! Administrator site.
Uninstall CiviCRM using the component uninstaller.
Download the latest CiviCRM package from SourceForge. Select the Joomla download. EXAMPLE: Select civicrm-2.0.x-joomla.zip
Upload this file to your server in your home directory and unzip it. Let's call this location HOME. Ensure that this is in a different directory from your Joomla! installation directory (lets call this JOOMLA_ROOT). You should now have a com_civicrm directory in your HOME directory with lots of sub-directories and files below it.
Edit the file HOME/com_civicrm/configure.php and make the following change on line 10.
Data Loss Warning
Updating configure.php as shown below is critical. Make sure you find the right file and save the change. Otherwise, your existing CiviCRM data will be over-written.
configure.php
```
// Change this line:

$civicrmUpgrade = false;

// To this:

$civicrmUpgrade = true;
```
Install the latest CiviCRM codebase, using the Install from Directory option. Point it to the directory HOME.
Log out of Joomla.

Delete the files in:

JOOMLA_ROOT/media/civicrm/templates_c

and

JOOMLA_ROOT/media/civicrm/upload

Temporarily enable CiviCRM debug features:
- Log back in to your Joomla Administrator site.
- Go to Administer CiviCRM » Global Settings » Debugging
- Set Enable Debugging to Yes and click Save.
Click the Administer CiviCRM menu (or any other CiviCRM menu item). After the page is loaded, add two additional query string values (&sessionReset=2&directoryCleanup=1) to the URL in your browser's location bar, and reload the page. (You may see a large number of missing file warning messages on your screen - depending on how your Error Reporting option is configured. These are expected and will disappear on the next page request.)
```
// Example URL
http://.../administrator/index2.php?option=com_civicrm&task=civicrm/admin/setting&reset=1&sessionReset=2&directoryCleanup=1
```
Now reset Enable Debugging to No and click Save.
Do Not Leave Debug Features Enabled for a Public Site
Debugging should be disabled for publicly available sites as it may allow browsers to view system configuration information.
You should be up and running with the latest CiviCRM version. Confirm by checking the version and revision in the page footer.
Recreate any Joomla menu links to front-end Profiles, Contribution Pages or Events.

Trouble-shooting

If you have any problems with these procedures, try searching the community forums and this wiki for solutions. If you've gotten an error message, use that message in your search. If you can not resolve the problem, then post your problem to the forum. Be sure to include the CiviCRM version and revision you are upgrading FROM and TO; your Joomla version; your PHP and MySQL versions; the steps you've taken and a the exact error message or problem that resulted.

Related Resources

Configuring Front-end Profile Listings and Forms in Joomla! Sites
Displaying Online Contribution Pages in Joomla! Frontend Sites