Updating Neos – Why, When and How

Neos is continuously developed further and new releases are done regularly. But why should I upgrade my site? And when should I do it? Last but not least, how (hard is it?) Answers to these questions based on years of upgrading a wide range of setups, from current to (very) legacy!

Some people

• never upgrade – until their hoster tells them, PHP 5.6 will be switched off.
• never, ever use a dot-zero release and wait for the first few bugfix releases.
• automate updates and delploy them to production untested.

All of these have a reasoning behind it, and I’ll try to look into it and explain what I think about it. That should help you find the way that fits you and your project (and is “correct”, as far as I am concerned).

After I hopefully answered the question about why and when one should upgrade Neos setups, the question of how to upgrade remains. I’ll try to answer that, too, by drawing from experience gathered during the past years. Of course there is no silver bullet or proven recipe that caters to all those needs, but expect some guideline to help you with your next update!

I have been upgrading small and big sites with a pretty wide range of complexity. Some had next to no 3rd party packages, others had massive amounts of Fusion code or used complex PHP code to integrate with external systems. Some were upgraded regularly, rarely leaving out a release, while others had skipped as much as three major releases.