Updating

With a license key (from the panel). Enter the key in Settings → General → Updates. When a new version is out, an announcement appears on the “Overview”; it leads to System → Updates → Engine. Click “Review and update”: first a review screen opens, and nothing is replaced until you click “Update”. It shows:

• what is new in this version;
• whether the server is suitable: PHP version, the zip and openssl extensions, free space;
• whether you changed engine files, based on the signed file list of the release. The update will replace files you edited with the release files; right here you can save your changes as an archive, download the new version for comparison and see the difference. Your themes, modules, settings and uploads are not touched.

The “Update to version …” button starts a step screen with percentages: downloading the archive, checking its signature, a database backup and a restore point for the files, replacing the files, database changes by the new code, a site check. While the files are being replaced, visitors see a “maintenance” page. It is best not to close the tab, but if you did, return to the same page: the update continues from the same place. Your config/database.php, config/local.php, storage/ and public/uploads/ are not touched. Without your click, the engine installs nothing.

Without a key. Upload the new files over the old ones by FTP, open System → Updates → Engine and click the apply button: the engine makes a database backup itself and then applies the changes. If the backup fails, the update does not start.

The database backup is placed in “Database backups”, and you can download it as a single file. Advice to “make a backup before updating” without such a button is no advice at all: ordinary hosting has neither mysqldump nor SSH.

If the site stopped opening after an update from the panel. After the files are replaced, the page checks that the site responds. If it does not, the page returns the files of the previous version from storage/recovery/files.zip by itself. The same page shows a restore key: save it (download it as a file); it is valid for 6 hours or until the update is confirmed. If the panel does not open at all, go to https://your-site/nx-recover.php, enter the key, and the previous version comes back. Restore works only when the site key app.key is set in config/local.php (at least 32 characters; the installer sets it for you).

Restore brings back files, not the database. If the new version’s migration deleted or renamed columns, the old code may not work: then restore the database backup made before the update (see “Database backups and restore”). An update “over the top by FTP” has no such protection: there the rollback is your old files, which you saved before uploading.

Until the update is applied, the site quietly runs on the old tables. Nothing breaks, nothing new appears, and the cause is invisible. That is why the “Overview” says so in red.

What is sent to us during the check. The site’s domain, the engine version, the PHP version and the license key. Nothing else: no content, no visitors, no settings.