Keeping Joomla version of your site up-to-date is one of the most important measures to keep it protected and free from bugs. Upgrade from Joomla 3.5 to Joomla 3.6 should not be too difficult. However, once again (unfortunately), upgrading Joomla can cause headache to its users.
At the moment when we write this blog post, current Joomla version is 3.6.2. We will suppose that current version of your Joomla is 3.5.0 or 3.5.1 and explain how to upgrade it.
1. When you open Joomla administrator panel, it will offer you to upgrade to Joomla 3.6.0 (not to the latest Joomla 3.6.2 or later). This is perfectly OK. Click the Upgrade button and upgrade your Joomla to version 3.6.0.
2. Open your Joomla administrator panel again and it will offer you to upgrade to Joomla 3.6.2 (or later) this time. DON'T DO THIS right now. Before upgrading to Joomla 3.6.2 (or later), you should upgrade Joomla! Update administrator component. This component is responsible for safe Joomla upgrades. However, it has a bug in version 3.6.0 and you should upgrade this component prior to upgrading Joomla.
- Variant A: In the best scenario, you will see a notification that an extension should be upgraded. This notification will be displayed together with notification of Joomla upgrade to 3.6.2 (or later). So, upgrade the extension first.
- Variant B: If you see only the notification about Joomla upgrade, and don't see the notification about extension upgrade, you should upgrade the extension manually. Fortunately, it's not complicated. All you need to do is to go to Extensions > Manage > Install. Then, select Install From URL tab. In Install From URL field, enter this link:
https://update.joomla.org/core/extensions/com_joomlaupdate.xmlFinally, click Check And Install button. It will update the Joomla! Update component.
3. After this, you can go to the administrator's panel again and upgrade Joomla to 3.6.2 (or later) as you usually do.
Potential post-upgrade issues
After upgrade to Joomla 3.6.2 (or later), when you edit an article, you would see a (harmless) warning about non-existing user with given ID. Simply save the article (with or without making changes) and the notification will disappear. However, the warning will be there for each article.
In some occasions, the warning message will stay there even after saving the article. In this case, if you want to get rid of the warning, you would need to change super administrator's ID value directly in database. You can do it from phpMyAdmin (it's usually included in almost all hosting packages). Open your Joomla database in phpMyAdmin and browse table #__users (where #__ is your table prefix). You will see ID in the first column. Edit this value and enter value that you get in the warning message. After this modification, the waring should not be displayed anymore.
All our templates are upgraded
We have upgraded HotStarts of all our templates to the latest Joomla version. If you are staring to make a new website based on our template, it's a good idea to download the new template files from our Downloads repository before doing the installation.