Upgrading a site from Perch 1.x to 3.2

  • Hello,


    So I have a very old site created by a different developer that has been running fine for many years. Something happened to the VM and it would no longer boot. I created a new VM and copied over the website and perch database and the pages would still not load. After a bunch of troubleshooting and exploring I found that the new server is running PHP 7.4.23 and that the version of Perch (I am assuming 1.x but don't know how to check as I don't have it on a functioning server anymore) the prior developer used does not support PHP 7.4.23. So I purchased a license and downloaded the latest version of Perch 3.2.


    I ended up renaming the original perch folder (technically called cms) and created a new cms folder and put the newest perch version in that folder and and ran the setup and got it connected to the mysql server (now MariaDB) and pointed it to the original perch database and provided the appropriate username and password and it connected just fine.


    And now my website will start to display but all the text content that comes from the CMS is blank.


    Looking in the database I only had 3 tables with the prior version:


    perch_contentitems

    perch_settings

    perch_users


    Now after installing Perch 3.2 I have a whole bunch of new tables prefixed perch3 and if I look at say perch3_content_items the table structure is totally different vs the old version of perch we were using. (again assuming 1.x)


    I have found multiple documents regarding upgrading from Perch 1 to Perch 2.0 or Perch 3.0 and all seem to provide the same instructions which is to download the Upgrade App from https://grabaperch.com/add-ons/apps/upgrade however when I go there I do not have an option to download an Upgrade App.


    Can someone please point me to where to get this Upgrade App or provide a database script I can run that will move all of my content over from the old table structure to the new table structure?


    when I go in to the pages setup in perch I do see my home page and all the various content tags that the page references and they all show as new. I also did go an update a couple of them trying to copy the content from the perch_contentitems table and while it works it is painful and the formatting is not correct.


    So I am hoping someone can provide a good link to the upgrade app or a database script I can run that will bring my content up to the latest version of perch and latest table structure.


    Thank you!

  • Matt A

    Approved the thread.
  • The Upgrade app is an old one now. It's on this page https://addons.perchcms.com/archive


    However, it was for Perch 1 > 2 as I remember. The Perch 2 -> 3 upgrade doesn't need the Upgrade app.


    I would make a copy of your Perch 1 site and carry out the Upgrade on a testing server. If that's OK, you could update from Perch 2 - 3 in the normal way (without using the Upgrade app).


    If the site is a small one, I would be tempted to start again with a fresh install of Perch 3 myself. It may be less work!