Andy,

when I am doing upgrades, I do them in my testing environment (backup after every successful step), and add all the extension upgrades necessary in the upgrade package. I write down all the steps necessary, then start all over again and when the upgrade works fine, I apply it to the production environment. See here for more information about the upgrade process, esp. the step to take the site offline.

Happy DNNing!

I wouldn't use the export/import feature, there are a number of caveats, that might not result in a complete transfer.
If you concentrate on skin and container and are able to make sure, all your modifications (especially CSS and JS) are stored in CSS files located in the skin (and the container) folder, you should be able to transfer the design from your local dev to production by just copying both folders. Now you would just need to apply the design to your site - If panned properly, this should be possible during a short maintenance period. You should prepare properly and write down all steps you need to apply the theme via admin UI or by using SQL (settings named DefaultPortalSkin, DefaultAdminSkin, DefaultPortalContainer and DefaultAdminContainer in portalsettings, skinsrc as well as columns containerSrc in tables tabs, tabmodules).

Thank you Michael and Sebastian.

I have the server virtualized on my desktop and like to make snapshots after each step so I can easily roll back if something goes wrong, or move back to the initial state to test my step-by-step instructions before rolling them out.

Unfortunately the changes are not just the layout. A lot of the content will change and the new theme has different panes and such. We also move from a design that shows multiple pages connected with "Next" and "Previous" buttons to a single page layouts where users will have to scroll a lot. Thanks to Facebook, Twitter and co they are used to that and love it.

The new theme uses bootstrap and there a lot of nice things included like FAQs, carousels, tabs and so on and we want to make use of those.

I could try to port it as good as possible, only switching the theme for each page and adjust for the panes. The site will look bad during that period. Then I could work on the live site to make it look good again and use the included theme features, which may take multiple days.

I just thought there maybe some way to prevent this transition period and directly move from old to new.

Edit: So, even if I make the changes on an identical copy of the productive site, both with the same modules and themes installed, I will get into some problems with Export/Import?

I don't see a chance to avoid the redesign period.
1. clone the site,
2. prevent changes on the old one
3. update the clone until it is ready for a relaunch
4. move over changes from old site to new site, that happened although 2.
5. replace old site by new one

Thank you Sebastian. Then I will do the re-design offline on my PC and when I'm done merge the local database with the relevant changes of the production DB. That should be mostly user registrations and the tables from our store. Once merged I can move all of it (file system + SQL DB) back to the web server. That should be possible. :)

Thanks again for your input. It worked out quite well. I backed up & restored the live DB into a temporary DB on my dev system and then wrote some SQL select queries (working with my dev and the temporary DB) for each table that needs to be synced to produce the missing records (users, orders, ...). Then I used the same select queries with an insert statement (had to enable identity insert for most tables to be able to set ID columns).

I did that when I was half through with the skin update and performed some QA checks on it. Yesterday when we went live with the new skin (after 6 weeks lol), I could simply repeat the process to refresh my dev DB and then move site + DB to the production system.

https://www.oic.wa.gov.au...rnal-review-activity

Hi Sebastian 

While I was uploading the OnyakTechchart onto our webiste After writing an SQL statement and updating the chart I have received the following error and I am unable to see the graph  -> 'A DataTable named 'ExternalReviewsOnHand' already belongs to this DataSet'.

Could you please assist ?
OnyakTech Chart/Managechart/SQL Statement/Updatechart