Hi all!
Just wanted to update this thread - as there were so many supportive responses when I was last here in May, with my tale of woe concerning upgrading my two 11+ year old V1.9 Moodle sites.
So --- Here is how it went ---
1. Using your collective advice, I chose the full upgrade path option - from V1.9+ to 3.9 ---
2. Before tackling this project myself, I visited Fiverr website - and started talking with a few guys who said they handled Moodle upgrades. Narrowed it down to one Moodle expert I felt confident with -- who had substantial top reviews for his Moodle work.
3. Got a quote for each site -- was about US$200 for each site. Was surprised it was so inexpensive, actually -- and tried to resist kicking myself for not doing this much sooner ;)
4. Set a date to do each upgrade with the Fiverr guy. About two days before the upgrade date for each, I switched the theme for each site back to the Moodle default - and ran a full back-up of both installations on my side.
5. I set up an interim server account with Digital Ocean -- and created two "droplets", as they're called - once Centos 6 / one Centos 7 (I think he only ended up needing the Centos 6 droplet) - so, the tech was never working on the live "old" Moodle site for the upgrades.
6. I was going to use new domains for each of the upgraded Moodle sites -- so, I added those two new domains to my other server and updated their nameservers from with my domain registrar. Everything was good-to-go for when the new upgraded sites were ready.
7. When the time came to complete the upgrade, the Fiverr Moodle tech placed the old campus into maintenance-mode --- copied the old site over to the interim Digital Ocean server -- completed all the version jumps there -- and then placed the completed upgrade site on our new server. As we were using new domains, he ran the find and replace tool for the upgraded sites ---
--- and.., just like that each site was upgraded and functioning flawlessly with about 2 - 3 hours of downtime!
There were just a few things to note ---
a. Even though the upgrades were ready in a flash -- I didn't open the sites to students for a couple of days. That gave me time to go in and update all the course page text, as the fonts and colors we had used on 1.9 needed to to brought up to current html standards. Everything worked, though -- no issues at all.
b. Where the new 3.9 Moodle campus was now running securely (https), most of the old photos (that still had the non-secure http urls) weren't showing up properly. So, I just had to go through each and fix all the mixed-content issues. Just took a couple hours - and all was good. Some links also needed to be updated, as well -- but, all-in-all was an easy process - and soon enough, I had padlocks showing up for all pages.
c. Students were able to use their old "non-complex" V1.9 passwords to access the new V3.9 campus -- and I just set the new campus to require creation of a new complex password on their first visit.
And -- the most important thing for me with these Moodle sites was that the 11+ years of data (assignments, grades, access logs, forums, etc.) was retained --- and it was.., perfectly!
The new V3.9 looks like it categorizes new data (post upgrade), vs legacy data for reporting. So, when I look at student access logs, for example, there's a sort option to show legacy data or just current data.
That doesn't apply to assignments or forums, though, as all data is shown as usual, regardless of the date submitted.
So -- that's my story -- and I stand by it ;) It's a big relief to finally have these upgrades done and off my back. Granted, my Moodle installations were likely not as complex as others might be -- the only add-ons to the default 1.9 Moodle I used were custom themes. I had no plug-ins at all - so, only had to worry about upgrading Moodle itself -- but, there was a good amount of data over 11+ years - and 1,000+ active students - and all that transferred perfectly.
If anyone has any questions about the process I didn't cover, I'm happy to answer. Also, if anyone needs a referral for similar multi-version Moodle upgrade work, I'll be glad to provide that via messaging. The tech from Fiverr was excellent -- very professional, great communication, and the Fiverr platform works very well for getting this type of work done -- all messaging and quote details are all handled within the system -- and the fees are held in their version of escrow - and are not released until you approve the finished work.
Thanks again for all your help!
Steve
Just wanted to update this thread - as there were so many supportive responses when I was last here in May, with my tale of woe concerning upgrading my two 11+ year old V1.9 Moodle sites.
So --- Here is how it went ---
1. Using your collective advice, I chose the full upgrade path option - from V1.9+ to 3.9 ---
2. Before tackling this project myself, I visited Fiverr website - and started talking with a few guys who said they handled Moodle upgrades. Narrowed it down to one Moodle expert I felt confident with -- who had substantial top reviews for his Moodle work.
3. Got a quote for each site -- was about US$200 for each site. Was surprised it was so inexpensive, actually -- and tried to resist kicking myself for not doing this much sooner ;)
4. Set a date to do each upgrade with the Fiverr guy. About two days before the upgrade date for each, I switched the theme for each site back to the Moodle default - and ran a full back-up of both installations on my side.
5. I set up an interim server account with Digital Ocean -- and created two "droplets", as they're called - once Centos 6 / one Centos 7 (I think he only ended up needing the Centos 6 droplet) - so, the tech was never working on the live "old" Moodle site for the upgrades.
6. I was going to use new domains for each of the upgraded Moodle sites -- so, I added those two new domains to my other server and updated their nameservers from with my domain registrar. Everything was good-to-go for when the new upgraded sites were ready.
7. When the time came to complete the upgrade, the Fiverr Moodle tech placed the old campus into maintenance-mode --- copied the old site over to the interim Digital Ocean server -- completed all the version jumps there -- and then placed the completed upgrade site on our new server. As we were using new domains, he ran the find and replace tool for the upgraded sites ---
--- and.., just like that each site was upgraded and functioning flawlessly with about 2 - 3 hours of downtime!
There were just a few things to note ---
a. Even though the upgrades were ready in a flash -- I didn't open the sites to students for a couple of days. That gave me time to go in and update all the course page text, as the fonts and colors we had used on 1.9 needed to to brought up to current html standards. Everything worked, though -- no issues at all.
b. Where the new 3.9 Moodle campus was now running securely (https), most of the old photos (that still had the non-secure http urls) weren't showing up properly. So, I just had to go through each and fix all the mixed-content issues. Just took a couple hours - and all was good. Some links also needed to be updated, as well -- but, all-in-all was an easy process - and soon enough, I had padlocks showing up for all pages.
c. Students were able to use their old "non-complex" V1.9 passwords to access the new V3.9 campus -- and I just set the new campus to require creation of a new complex password on their first visit.
And -- the most important thing for me with these Moodle sites was that the 11+ years of data (assignments, grades, access logs, forums, etc.) was retained --- and it was.., perfectly!
The new V3.9 looks like it categorizes new data (post upgrade), vs legacy data for reporting. So, when I look at student access logs, for example, there's a sort option to show legacy data or just current data.
That doesn't apply to assignments or forums, though, as all data is shown as usual, regardless of the date submitted.
So -- that's my story -- and I stand by it ;) It's a big relief to finally have these upgrades done and off my back. Granted, my Moodle installations were likely not as complex as others might be -- the only add-ons to the default 1.9 Moodle I used were custom themes. I had no plug-ins at all - so, only had to worry about upgrading Moodle itself -- but, there was a good amount of data over 11+ years - and 1,000+ active students - and all that transferred perfectly.
If anyone has any questions about the process I didn't cover, I'm happy to answer. Also, if anyone needs a referral for similar multi-version Moodle upgrade work, I'll be glad to provide that via messaging. The tech from Fiverr was excellent -- very professional, great communication, and the Fiverr platform works very well for getting this type of work done -- all messaging and quote details are all handled within the system -- and the fees are held in their version of escrow - and are not released until you approve the finished work.
Thanks again for all your help!
Steve