Wanna be a guinea pig? Here's my suggestion, and this is exactly what I'll probably do:

1. back up all your files. download and zip them up.
2. back up your database. download it to your local computer.
(You should always do this before upgrading or installing anything, anyways!)

3. upload the new b2evolution. don't follow the directions, and keep your conf and skins and whatever else you want to use.

4. run the install. Does it work? No? Well, follow a few of the instructions that you ignored, and delete and upload the new conf folder, and try again.

5. check out your page. Is it broken? No? Great! Yes? Again, follow the instructions, and delete/reinstall the skins folder.

For special bonus points, let us know how it goes.

Worst case scenario, you have to restore from a backup, and that's not so bad.

Sure, I can do that.

It will be tonight or first thing tomorrow morning. Then I 'll let you know all the details.

The only smart way to optimize the upgrade procedure is to use a diff tool and check what has changed, especially in the conf files.

Not updating the conf files is a guarantee for trouble down the road. Try to save yourself 5 minutes now and lose a few hours later... :-/

True dat.

All finished!

What I did:
1 - Delete EVERYTHING but the skins folder (the conf files had too many changes, couldn't skip them)
2 - Edited conf files to my settings
3 - Upload new dirs / files
4 - Ran the upgrade/install script.

Everything seemed to work and the site didn't spit anything up, but still I went one more step in case there were some added features:

5 - Replaced base files in the skin folder with the upgraded ones. (But kept my custom skin folders as they were).

Everything worked well!

Also - on my previous install (9.0.3) my comment notification emails stopped working. After this upgrade, they are working again - this might be a subject of another thread (or may need to be) somewhere.

Hm.. Isn't that (pretty much) what the instructions said to do, anyway? :)

The notification thing is (i think) a bug that's been recently corrected, and since it's working now, no need to report again. Thanks, tho.

isaac wrote:

Hm.. Isn't that (pretty much) what the instructions said to do, anyway? :)

Pretty much. It said to delete your skins folder completely too. That was the step I was wanting to skip, since one of my sites has a skin that is completely cust0mz0rd (messed up by your truly).

Knowing that I can skip that step, I now can go ahead with upgrades to my other sites.