Update guide available? I'm nervous.

[Lance]

Hi,

I’m a non-professional maintaining a website for a small organization. I put in a lot of time and energy, with a fair number exchanges back and forth on the forums, and with my theme developer, getting Events Calendar Pro 3.9.3 working for my site, including a few customizations. I’ve seen warnings(?) that 3.10 is a “big update,” that problems should be expected, etc., etc. This makes me nervous about updating, so I’ve stayed at 3.9.3.

I’ve seen your “things to be aware of” posting for 3.10, but frankly, it just made me more reluctant to update.

My question is: Is there a step-by-step guide to updating that could help a non-professional navigate the process?

[Geoff]

Hi Lance and thanks for getting in touch!

First off–thank you so much for reading through the release notes. It’s awesome you’re doing that and the fact that you’re reaching out as a result is perfect.

Secondly, you’re absolutely correct. Version 3.10 was indeed a significant update where we refactored and cleaned up a lot of code. Again, nice work for checking in before simply hitting update!

If you have customized calendar templates or added functions, it might be possible those could break when updating. In many cases, the updates have had no impact on sites whatsoever, but we would ere on the side of caution for sure.

That said, do you have a development site where you can test the update? I would recommend this for any WordPress, theme or plugin updates in general, but it would be an excellent idea in this situation since it does sound like you have put some time and effort into integrating the theme and plugin together. This will help you see what impact the update has without interrupting your live site.

If you see any negative impact, then do please let us know by opening a thread and we can help from there!

does that make sense and will that work for you? Please let me know. 🙂

Cheers!
Geoff

[Lance]

I’ve looked into creating a development site, for example

https://codex.wordpress.org/Running_a_Development_Copy_of_WordPress

Looks tricky and time-consuming. What about just making a complete backup of my site before hitting the “update now” link for TEC Pro?

And, would I be correct in assuming that I should update the basic “The Events Calendar” plugin first, then the “Pro” add-on?

Would it make any sense to deactivate both or either before updating?

Thanks! Lance

[Geoff]

Good questions, Lance!

That article does make a development site look daunting, but creating a test site is typically no more than a couple of clicks from your host’s dashboard. Many hosts will help set that up for you if you ask. Once the development site has been created, you can upload your theme and plugin files and use it as a testing group for updates.

You could certainly backup the site and click update–in fact, I would highly recommend backing up your site files and database anytime you make any updates to your live site, whether that’s for WordPress, your theme or any other plugin. It’s a good practice for sure, even if you’ve already tested the updates on a development site. 🙂

And, yes, you can update The Events Calendar and then The Events Calendar PRO. That’s a good idea to deactivate PRO, then update The Events Calendar, then update and re-activate PRO.

The biggest priority to me is getting a place where you can test the updates. It sounds like you’ve done some work in the past to make everything work together and I’d hate for you to inadvertently lose it.

Geoff

[Support Droid]

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If you still need assistance please simply open a new topic (linking to this one if necessary)
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