Dotnetnuke - Upgrading Website (TUTORIAL)
Part 1 of 3 :
The worst thing that can happen to you when upgrading your DNN website, is that users accessing your website may accidently start the upgrade process before you are ready to upgrade. Therefore the first step in the process of upgrading your website, should be to prevent this from happening.
The best way to handle this is to upload a file to the root of your website called "app_offline.htm". Within this file you can place some helpful user friendly text such as "website offline for maintenance" etc... The image below shows an example of a very simple htm file used for this purpose :
The way this works is...
This file, can be uploaded, or even renamed from "app_offline.old" to "app_offline.htm" for example and toggled back and forward when needed. ASP.NET 2.0 upon seeing a file of this name in the root folder of your website or application, will shut-down your application, unload the application domain from the server, and refuse to run any new requests.
Now you are free to upload the new version of DNN to your website and make those important changes to your web.config file... oh and also cross your fingers and legs and hope for the best :-)
Once finished, you simply remove or rename the "app_offline.htm" file again from your website/applications root folder, and the next time an incoming request hits your application, ASP.NET will again load your application and the application domain and your website is back again!