Visvanath Ratnaweera

Some other approaches to make Moodle more CMS-like are:
- Boost navigation fumbling https://moodle.org/plugins/local_boostnavigation
- Static Pages https://moodle.org/plugins/local_staticpage

Don't say they are not like this or that: They are not!

I think what the OP needs is a CMS; not Moodle.

Moodle is a CMS (Course Management System) and not a CMS (Content Management System). If you need both, then you need both. Nothing comes without "problems" (perhaps you meant _work_).

For "true" upgrades there are document pages like https://docs.moodle.org/29/en/Upgrading, https://docs.moodle.org/30/en/Upgrading, etc.

Notice that you don't have to march through every Moodle release. You can figure out possible intermediate steps by studying the "Earliest from" column of http://www.syndrega.ch/blog/#php-and-dbms-compatibility-of-major-moodle-releases. Notice that these stepping stones may need different version of system software (like PHP). You'll find them too in that chart.

The other route you've mentioned is a https://docs.moodle.org/28/en/Course_backup followed by https://docs.moodle.org/en/Course_restore. This needs to be done for all the courses.

You are welcome!

The results of that plug-in are only for you. i can't look at each file and tell you whether they are good or bad.

A step-by-step approach would be to create any test.html file in the Moodle code directory (that is where the config.php is). Then get that test.html rendered in the target browser by visiting http://where.you.want/test.html. In this step Moodle does not play a role at all. It is either the web server, Apache in your case, the network and the network configurations of your server and your client.

Once that works, then visit http://where.you.want in the target browser and tell us what happens.

Note: This 'where.you.want' is likely the IP address of the server in your case.