Magento: How to Upgrade Magento community to 1.8

How to Upgrade Magento community to 1.8
How to Upgrade Magento community to 1.8

Magento recommends you upgrade your installation using the following guidelines in a development or test environment, separate from your existing production environment:

  1. Create a parallel development or testing system, identical to your current production system.
    You’ll use this parallel system to implement and test the Magento upgrade.
  2. In your current production environment:
    1. Back up your Magento database.
    2. Archive the file system.
      This includes the media directory and subdirectories; all extensions and customizations; and all custom themes.
  3. In the development or test environment:
    1. Create a new, empty database instance.
    2. Import the production database tables into the development database instance.
    3. Copy your production media directory, extensions, themes, and other customizations to the development system.
    4. Copy local.xml to magento-install-dir/app/etc and edit it if necessary to reference the production database instance.
    5. In a web browser, go to your development system base URL.
    6. Wait for upgrade scripts to run.
    7. Verify the development system is now identical to the production system.
      If not, fix issues, retest, and upgrade again.
  4. Test the development system thoroughly, including:
    • Verify all extensions, themes, and customizations work.
    • Place orders using all webstores and all payment methods.