Suite 3.8.4 to 4.0.1 Upgrade and Directory Movement Questions
 

Hi…I am prepping to upgrade from 3.8.4 to the 4.0.1 CMS. Currently my forums reside in www.mysite.com/forums. I have been running VB 3.8 concurrent with Joomla 1.5. With this new CMS I am eliminating Joomla except for VirtueMart which will serve as my shop. Joomla has always resided in it’s own directory as well. In the root of Mysite I have routed using .htaccess to Joomla as the main page.

With the new 4.0 CMS I want to install that into my root Mysite directory, but I want to keep the forums where they are. I also want to keep my database intact. Does anyone have any recommendations as how to go about doing an upgrade like this??

My initial plan was to do this:

1. Backup the current database
2. Create a new database
3. Install 3.8.4 to the root of www.mysite.com
4. Restore the backup database to the new database
5. Rename www.mysite.com/forums to www.mysite.com/forumsold
6. Upgrade the CMS 4.0 over the root

That seems like a right order and the thing to do, but I am not sure how to get the forums back into /forums. Would some guru give me direction here?

There are two other points that I am concerned with as well:

1. In a test run in a PRIVATE test directory, the upgrade got to Step 9 and then my database gave an error about an image exceeding the size in kb. And it stopped cold. This was on a fresh install of 3.8.4 with a restored database that was working, with no mods installed in VB…trying to upgrade to 4.0.1.
2. If I enable the SEO will my hardcoded links in posts that point to www.mysite.com/forums/forum.php? etc. still work?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions, offers, aid, help, guidance, and well-wishes!