How to upgrade liferay version 4.2.1 to latest liferay version 6/7

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Jaya Sharma, modified 5 Years ago.

How to upgrade liferay version 4.2.1 to latest liferay version 6/7

New Member Posts: 22 Join Date: 1/10/18 Recent Posts

Hi All,

Our application is built on liferay 4.2.1, we want to upgrade it to some higher version of liferay 6 or higher.

Please help me to understand what are the steps to be followed.

Regards,
Jaya

Olaf Kock, modified 5 Years ago.

RE: How to upgrade liferay version 4.2.1 to latest liferay version 6/7

Liferay Legend Posts: 6403 Join Date: 9/23/08 Recent Posts

Jaya SharmaHi All,

Our application is built on liferay 4.2.1, we want to upgrade it to some higher version of liferay 6 or higher.

Check the administrator documentation. Navigating there is tricky, I've recently described it here :
https://community.liferay.com/en_GB/forums/-/message_boards/message/112908072

Gnaniyar Zubair, modified 5 Years ago.

RE: How to upgrade liferay version 4.2.1 to latest liferay version 6/7

Liferay Master Posts: 722 Join Date: 12/19/07 Recent Posts

Hi

you are trying to upgrade from 4 to 6 which has many difference in architecture and APIs and design....etc.

It is better to create new portlet in latest versions.

Atleast we can try to migrate to version 6 if you give more details about the portlet framework of v4 .

Olaf Kock, modified 5 Years ago.

RE: How to upgrade liferay version 4.2.1 to latest liferay version 6/7

Liferay Legend Posts: 6403 Join Date: 9/23/08 Recent Posts

Gnaniyar Zubair

you are trying to upgrade from 4 to 6 which has many difference in architecture and APIs and design....etc.

It is better to create new portlet in latest versions.

I'd say: It depends. For a portal that's not customized (e.g. stock functionality with a custom theme), I'd try the database upgrade and create a new theme on the target version. If there's a lot of customization, yes: Some of that might be superfluous right now, some might be hard to migrate and indeed it might make more sense to start over new than to migrate.

But there's no generic "better". It always depends on the circumstances.

Gnaniyar Zubair, modified 5 Years ago.

RE: How to upgrade liferay version 4.2.1 to latest liferay version 6/7

Liferay Master Posts: 722 Join Date: 12/19/07 Recent Posts

Here he mentioned that liferay 4 to suddenly 6 or 7 which would create more complexity irrespective of he customized or not. But he can copy and paste some implementation logic from 4 to 6 and debug the issue .

Instead of debugging the issues of liferay API difference and presentation layer conflicts and portlet standards...etc, i feel , it is better for going new portlets.

Olaf Kock, modified 5 Years ago.

RE: How to upgrade liferay version 4.2.1 to latest liferay version 6/7

Liferay Legend Posts: 6403 Join Date: 9/23/08 Recent Posts

Indeed, yes.
But as a comparison: The very first portal that I built with Liferay (5.x) had a theme as the only custom development. Everything else was stock. That portal made heavy use of MessageBoards, and it'll be a lot of work to carry over old messageboard archives into a new installation. It might be worth to see if the database upgrade is smooth in that case.
That's where the "it depends" comes in. OP doesn't mention anything about the complexity and customization of the 4.x portal.
We're in general agreement, but I'd like to point out that there are cases where other options exist.