upgrade from evolution to revolution

Hi guys,

I want to upgrade from Evolution to Revolution.

If i install Revolution can I then copy the pages, templates, chunks etc in to the new database from the old sql file or is this just wishful thinking

the site is currently using e-form, ajax search, smallflash and sideshow snippets.

It also uses custom chunks for the navigationand a custo PHP snippet that changes the background image according to page number.

If this is a bad idea, is there any kind of automated upgrade on the cards?

thanks in advance for any help on this.

http://rtfm.modx.com/display/revolution20/Upgrading+MODx
http://rtfm.modx.com/display/revolution20/Upgrading+from+MODx+Evolution

This may help you also :- http://modxcms.com/extras/package/563

Thanks for that

Will there ever be an easy way to upgrade a site from Evolution to Revolution, or a fool proof step-by-step guide?

In the meantime, is it an option to just backup everything, upload the Revo files on top of the old files, run the setup and hope for the best? Is there any possibility the site will work and the content still be there so one can just go through and update the syntax in templates etc., or will everything be completely messed up if doing this?

Can we have a date for the facility for upgrading from Evolution to Revolution. Bob’s Guide is frankly incomprehensible, the versioning tool didn’t work for me and gave no clue as to why it didn’t work, I would have thought this was of the highest priority but here we are with yet another version of Revo without this absolutely fundamental feature. Its just getting depressing how difficult obvious things are in Modx.

The appalling documentation of Modx is the one thing holding it back. Getting my current site up and running (now just over a year) probably took several years off my life (mostly trying to get things to work that were actually broken like parts of the custom date fields in combination with PHX or the ticker, no idea if these have actually been fixed), I’m going to have to revisit the code for a major overhaul very soon, it would probably be best to do it in Revo but just can’t do it.

So is there a time-line planned for Revo to be able to import Evo sites?

Modx does seem kind of exciting again but if I had my time again, probably wouldn’t have chosen it, everything is just such a major trial.

the versioning tool didn’t work for me

If you mean Provisioner then try 1.9, its Evolution site import is much improved now.

Quote from: shamblett at Dec 21, 2010, 08:12 PM

the versioning tool didn’t work for me

If you mean Provisioner then try 1.9, its Evolution site import is much improved now.

Yes I meant this tool. I’m absolutely prepared to rewrite my code in the hope that Revolution has better features, but obviously I want to have well over a years worth of articles to experiment with. I’m a much better programmer than I was. Last time I tried the Provisioner just nothing happened even though I think I followed all the instructions correctly.

What I’m hoping in particular for that I can use the API to access a calendar and further information database I integrated with Modx Evo. These are just extra tables in the database. I’ve had the odd freeze over the year when I’ve had a highish (for me) number of hits and Revo promises to be better in this regard. Revolution just looks a better program all over but we’ll see.

I am surprised this topic doesn’t have better documentation, I will try and find the latest thread on the Provisioner. It would just have been nice to have been able to just upgrade.

OK Provisioner does work much better now. I would observe that the package manager sent me round and round in circles saying I hadn’t set the repository when I had until I found on the internet that CURL had to be enabled in PHP. Another half an hour I’m not getting back.

I recently upgraded my main site to Revo, I’m very glad I did it and I’m loving the power of the new system, but the upgrade process is not trivial and I have a couple of recommendations:

-Do not try it on a live site. It is likely that some features will break and there is somewhat of a learning curve involved in fixing them, so it may take you a while to get back up and running. Copy your site onto a subdomain or some other development environment and perform the upgrade there, and then once you have everything working move it back onto the main domain.

-I found it was easier to install a clean copy of Revo on my dev subdomain and then import the content, rather than trying to actually run the upgrade script.

-You will need to familiarize yourself with PHPMyAdmin or whatever SQL tool you use. You’ll probably need it. Export your old database tables and import them into your clean copy of Revo. This means you have to know which tables actually contain your content, but that should be pretty easy to figure out just by poking around in the database.

-Don’t try to update your tags by hand. Run search/replace SQL queries directly on the database to do the character substitutions listed in Bob’s guide (cited in the rtfm).

-Be prepared to rewrite any custom snippets you have, and to rewrite or upgrade any third-party snippets and plugins you use. This means learning the new API but XPDO is so awesome that learning it is a worthwhile and fun exercise in itself.


YMMV. This is the way I did it and it worked out for me, but like I said it’s not easy and be prepared for setbacks and problems.

That said, it’s totally worth it. Revo rocks.