There have been more than a few updates to Magento in the last 2 months or so, and unless you’ve just installed it or haven’t worked on it, an update is going to be a bit of an annoyance. You certainly don’t want to reinstall Magento and copy or, even worse, add all your products and skin changes all over again.

The best way by far to update Magento is to use the Magento Downloader facility. To do that, all you need is a paper, pencil, a die… no, wait. You need Magento installed and an Internet connection. An FTP client and/or a helpful Web Host will come in handy as well.

In The Beginning…

To begin with, you need to set the folder permissions so that the Downloader can work. The Downloader requires all of the folders in your Magento install, every single one, to be writeable. If you have an FTP client like FileZilla and a lot of patience, you can ask it to set the permissions of your folders to 777 and recurse it through all folders and subdirectories. Don’t change permissions for the files – this isn’t needed. If you have SSH access or a nice webhost, ask them to run this line in your Magento install folder:

find . –type d –exec chmod 777 {} \;

This command will find all the directories and set the permission to 777. And it’s a lot quicker than using an FTP client… if you are forced to use an FTP client, I’d go put the kettle on. And maybe go to the shop and buy some biscuits – it’s going to take a while.

Let there be Downloads

Once you’ve done that, point your browser to www.yourdomainname.extension/downloader Here you’ll be presented with a login screen. Any user with full admin rights can log in to this area.

Once you’ve logged in, assuming you’ve never been in the Downloader before you’ll be confronted with a screen that looks a bit like this (click on the thumbnail to view it full size):

You can’t use the full functionality of the Downloader yet. Enter the following line of code into the second box (Paste extension key to install) – it will tell the Downloader to find and install all the latest updates for Magento:

magento-core/Mage_All_Latest

Push the button and wait for the console to tell you it’s finished installing (the downloader opens up a black console screen in your web page, with green text) and you’ll see this page (again, click on the thumbnail):

Now the hard part is over. When you refresh this page, you’ll see a list of all the Magento components, your version number and the current version available. Modules requiring an update are highlighted in Gold. You can also use this downloader to incorporate modules available on Magento Connect into your Magento store.

It’s also recommended that you take Varien’s advice and select the option to clear all the sessions – this will ensure that you won’t encounter any cached content from older versions.

Well, that’s it – no more cumbersome upgrades or installs!

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