updating sitecake

Sitecake 4 updates itself. When a new version is available, you’ll see an in-editor popup, just press update. Still on Sitecake 2.5? Upgrade to 4 by hand, once.

Summary

• Log in as usual. Sitecake checks for a newer version automatically.
• If one is available, a toast appears with Update and Later buttons.
• Click Update and Sitecake downloads, installs, and reloads. Your configuration and password are untouched.

How it works

After you log in, Sitecake checks for a newer release in the background. If one exists, a toast notification offers Update or Later. Clicking Update:

1. Downloads the new version.
2. Backs up the current version folder.
3. Extracts the new version alongside it.
4. Rewrites sitecake.php to point to the new version.
5. Reloads the page.

Your credentials.php, editor.cnf, and config.php files live outside the version folder and are never touched by an update.

Upgrading from Sitecake 2.5

Sitecake 2.5 can’t update itself to version 4, so this one upgrade is done by hand. Your pages, images and password carry over.

Before you start, make sure that:

• Your host runs PHP 8.0 or newer. Sitecake 2.5 needed only PHP 5.6, so check this first. Most hosts let you switch the PHP version in their control panel.
• You have a license key, which Sitecake 4 asks for on a live domain. Get one on the pricing page; the email with your key also has the download link.

Then:

1. Publish your changes. Log in to Sitecake 2.5 and publish anything you haven’t yet. Unpublished drafts can get lost in the upgrade.
2. Back up your site. Download a copy of the whole website folder. If anything goes wrong, upload it back and you’re on 2.5 again.
3. Upload the new version folder. Unzip Sitecake 4 on your computer and upload its sitecake/4.x.x/ folder into the sitecake/ folder on your host, next to 2.5.0/.
4. Replace two files with the ones from the ZIP: sitecake.php in your site root, and sitecake/config.php. The old config.php blocks WebP images; if you changed settings in it, copy them over.
5. Log in. Open yourdomain.com/sitecake.php, enter your license key, then your usual password.
6. Clean up. Once everything works, delete sitecake/2.5.0/. If your site root has sitecake-temp/ or sitecake-backup/ folders, delete them too. Sitecake 4 uses cms-temp/ and cms-backup/ instead.

Your site before the clean-up:

sitecake/
  2.5.0/           ← delete when done
  4.x.x/           ← new
  config.php       ← from the ZIP
  credentials.php  ← keep: your password
  editor.cnf       ← keep: your toolbar
sitecake.php       ← from the ZIP

White-label installs upgrade the same way, with admin.php and cms/ in place of sitecake.php and sitecake/. After the upgrade, Sitecake updates itself.