Caveats on upgrading Plone sites

If you upgrade a Plone site from version 2.5 to, say, 3.0, take a good inventory of the customizations you have made to your site before you run the portal_migration.  Those customizations will include the usual skin changes, found in portal_skins/custom, portal_tabs, and workflows.

Potential Workflow Problems

In one recent case we saw, a 2.5 site had a workflow called "intranet".  When this site was upgraded to Plone 3.1, the existence of the custom-added "intranet" workflow clashed with the "intranet" workflow that Plone 3.0 and 3.1 now ship with.  

The portal_migration upgrade script did not indicate this problem, and proceeded with the upgrade.  However it turns out that this left permission problems in the upgraded site, because expected intranet behaviour did not work.  For example, setting an intranet placeful workflow policy on a folder did not hide it correctly from unauthorized users.

It was only when the offending "intranet" workflow was renamed in portal_workflow, then a clean copy of "intranet" workflow taken and pasted from a clean 3.1 site (followed by an update of all workflow-affected objects) that everything worked correctly.

Missing Site Map

Another problem with 2.5 -> 3.X upgrades is that the "site map" link is missing from the top right corner of the page.  To restore it, use the ZMI (via Site Setup -> Zope Management Interface) and go to portal_actions.  Click on site_actions.  Using the drop down at the top right of the page, add a CMF Action.  Give it the ID "sitemap" and click Save.  Click on the new "sitemap" action you just created, and enter the following in the fields:

• Title: Site Map
• I18n domain: plone
• URL: string:$portal_url/sitemap
• don't select anything in the Permissions listbox
• check the box for Visible
• press Save Changes
• go back to the portal_actions/site_actions
• check the box next to your new "sitemap" action and press the button labeled "Top"; this moves the site map link to its expected place among the other site actions
  

When you go back to the normal view of your site you should see the site map link in the top right corner of every page.