After having to rely on FTP to install & upgrade my forums, it was nice to find myself on a VPS with command-line access for the first time in years. Here are the step by step instructions for those who've forgotten or never knew how easy it could be.
Start with a couple notes:
1. First download the update to your local computer.
2. Change the file name to something easily typed but still recognizable, e.g. "mysite-120-rc1.zip"
3. Upload the update file to your forum's home directory (/home/myacct/public_html). I use the Parallel Power Panel to do this; FTP will also work.
4. Now fire up your command-line access (I use Putty) and log in
5. cd /home/myacct/public_html
6. If you have an old upload directory left over, delete it, typing carefully: rm -rf upload
7. unzip mysite-120-rc1.zip
8. cd upload
9. Type carefully: /bin/cp -fr * ../
10. cd ..
11. Type carefully: rm -rf upload
12. rm mysite-120-rc1.zip
13. rm INSTALL-UPGRADE.txt
14. Go to your web browser & execute the install script: www.mysite.xyz/install
I usually do steps 8-13 after step 14 to reduce the window in which the site might have "issues" due to the incomplete installation.
Start with a couple notes:
- We will refer to sites account as "myacct" and to the site itself as "mysite".
- I have "root access" to the file system. If you have command-privileges without root access, your file-system references will start at a higher level in the file hierachy, rather than at /home/...
- The base directory for one of my forums is usually at "/home/myacct/public_html/"; your installation might be different
1. First download the update to your local computer.
2. Change the file name to something easily typed but still recognizable, e.g. "mysite-120-rc1.zip"
3. Upload the update file to your forum's home directory (/home/myacct/public_html). I use the Parallel Power Panel to do this; FTP will also work.
4. Now fire up your command-line access (I use Putty) and log in
5. cd /home/myacct/public_html
6. If you have an old upload directory left over, delete it, typing carefully: rm -rf upload
7. unzip mysite-120-rc1.zip
8. cd upload
9. Type carefully: /bin/cp -fr * ../
10. cd ..
11. Type carefully: rm -rf upload
12. rm mysite-120-rc1.zip
13. rm INSTALL-UPGRADE.txt
14. Go to your web browser & execute the install script: www.mysite.xyz/install
I usually do steps 8-13 after step 14 to reduce the window in which the site might have "issues" due to the incomplete installation.