Fool-proof Migrations from Joomla 3 to Joomla 4.x

Hi Karin,

This video will show you how to start a new migration:
https://www.cybersalt.com/migrateme-4/how-to-start-a-new-test-joomla-4-migration-with-migrateme-4

Here are other videos what will help you in using MigrateMe4

If you are still stuck after that, I am happy to log in and take a quick look at your site. You can send me your super user login details and admin login url through this form:
https://cybersalt.com/services/support-request-form

You will notice that form is not on the PWD site. This link explores my role in PWD support:
https://cybersalt.com/net-shaker/cybersalt-is-managing-support-for-php-web-design

God bless,

Tim

no worries. got it.

Hi David,

I think that is indicating something is not Joomla 4 compatible. A better error message would help say what. Here is a video showing you how to get more information: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0W6ZqrbbkbU

God bless,

Tim

You are very welcome. I'm glad it helped!

Hi Patrick,

I am glad you are enjoying the ease of MigrateMe 4. If you would leave a review for us on the Joomla Extension Directory that would be great! https://extensions.joomla.org/extension/migrateme-4/

To answer your questions, MM4 makes a copy of your database tables, giving them a prefix named mm4_. It only ever makes one copy.

If you have completed your migration, did you remove the /MM4 files and tables? If not, this video will show you how to do that. - https://cybersalt.com/migrateme-4/how-to-remove-your-joomla-4-test-migration-area-and-uninstall-migrateme-4

If that is not the issue, and since your host said they don't know much about Joomla, I would be happy to log into your hosting and take a look. If you want me to do that, contact me through [email protected] and we'll get that going.

God bless,

Tim

You are very welcome - thanks for the feedback and encouragement! It would be very much appreciated if you would review us on the Joomla Extensions Directory as well - https://extensions.joomla.org/extension/migrateme-4/

God bless,

Tim

Hi Stefan,

We have begun to talk about what we might be able to offer to help those going to J5, but there are some pitfalls to overcome going from J3 to J5 - so right now J3 to J4 (which is a migration) will get you to the point where you can go from j4 to J5 (which is only an update)

God bless,

Tim

Hi Bill,

This video will tell you everything you want to know about removing your MM4 test area:
https://cybersalt.com/migrateme-4/how-to-remove-your-joomla-4-test-migration-area-and-uninstall-migrateme-4

God bless,

Tim

Thanks Tim

No apologies needed, emailing is much better and I just replied!

Hi Tim

I filled in that request form yesterday afternoon.
Hope you can help !

be well
Eoin

Hi Eoin,

I logged into your site and have a support video coming your way1

my experience with this... i have admin tools pro installed in nearly every site i've run MM4 on. the issue is the htaccess file. using FTP, go to the mm4 directory. rename the .htaccess file something like WAShtaccess. Delete the htaccess.txt file that's in the mm4 directory. Download a new full Joomla 4.3.4 zip file. Unzip it. Upload that folder's htaccess.txt file. Change it to .htaccess

that will get rid of the 404 menu errors.

Hi Eduardo,

Tim Davis here, helping with support.

You are welcome to email me through our support address [email protected] for a more in depth look at this, but basically you need to find out from your template provider if you should install (using the Joomla extension installer) the j4 version of your template before or after migrating your site to J4.

As I said, if you email I will be better able to keep track of any tips or help I can give you with your migration.

God bless,

Tim

Funny how I gave it two stars yet my original post shows 5 starts...misleading...

Hi Kris,

I'm sad it didn't work out for you, but glad you found a path to complete your migration. I have refunded your purchase.

God bless,

Tim

Hi Alex - Congrats on migrating so many Joomla sites and for the great review of Migrateme 4! I also appreciate your kind words about me.

Hi John,

You are very welcome! Thanks for the great recommendation for MigrateMe4!

Hi Carlos,

Tim Davis here, helping with support.

MigrateMe4 creates a staging area where you ca easily test your J3 to J4 migration as many times as you need, without breaking your live site, or requiring you to manually make test areas again and again.

The actual migration that takes place is not affected by MM4.

Unfortunately, there is no version of K2 that works with Joomla 4, and so you will not be able to migrate to Joomla 4 until one is out or if you move you K2 content back into the core Joomla articles component.

I have experience with moving K2 back into the Joomla core. You are welcome to email me and we can discuss how you can do that.

Tim - [email protected]

Thanks.

We already bought MM4.

Please, need your help with this.

Hi Carlos,

I have already replied to your email to the support address so we can continue our exchange there, which is much more efficient (and less public) to share links and logins!

God bless,

Tim

Hi Chris,

If you add this to the your site url (after you have logged into the back end) the MM4 log may give you a clue as to what happened during the process of duplicating the tables of your live site:

/administrator/components/com_migrateme4/log.txt

MM4 would not do anything differently with CE than anything else. That said, all MM4 does is create the testing area for your migration so if something untoward is happening with an extension and/or its tables it is probably something that would have happened during the migration process without MM4 as well. I have seen migrations where core tables where not copying or creating properly. In fact, it happens to some core tables more often than others regardless of the migration process.

Keep me posted!

Hi Ludvig,

Sorry for the slow reply, I am travelling this week on vacation.

Regarding your migration plans, there is no J2store version available for use on live J4 sites, so I recommend you wait before doing your migariton.

Regarding support, we fully support MigrateMe 4 while you have an active subscription. MM4 creates a test area for you to do your migration work. We often help with some questions related to the initial steps of migration, but for more numerous or complex help with your migration(s) we can quote on that as well.

You are very welcome to email [email protected] about that or any other questions you have.

God bless,

Tim

Hi Chris,

Sorry for the slow reply, I was away at a conference and forgot to check for comments!

MM4 has "safe mode" on by default, which disables non-core extensions in order to cut down on surprise breaks if something that isn't J4 compatible gets missed when you do a test migration. You can turn that off in the MM4 settings.

Here is the changelog since the beginning of the year:

=== CHANGELOG ===

Version 4.3.1.1
Date: 25th May 2023
Minor xml fix

Version 4.3.1
Date: 15th May 2023
Added upgrade to 4.3.1
Minor text fix

Version 4.3.0
Date: 19th April 2023
Added upgrade to 4.3.0

Version 4.2.9
Date: 21st March 2023
Added upgrade to 4.2.9
Fixed minor bug with Remove Migration button

Version 4.2.8.2
Date: 27th February 2023
Small textual changes

Version 4.2.8.1
Date: 20th February 2023
Added backups management

Version 4.2.8
Date: 17th February 2023
Added upgrade to 4.2.8

Version 4.2.7
Date: 6th February 2023
Added upgrade to 4.2.7

Version 4.2.6.2
Date: 18th January 2023
Minor fix for Joomla 4.2.6 install

I have purchased MM4 a month ago. And I have a 'test version' so I have two packages: com_migrateme4_6563.zip and com_migrateme4_4038.zip. Which one should I use?

And I saw in the changelog there is e newer version. How do I become a new version?
I do not see a login. And also I did not get an e-mail for a new version.

(My registration for this site is with my paypal-email address, which is not my mail address but from the person who pays the money....)

Hi Nico,

The numbers at the end of the filenames are actually random in order to help those whose browsers were caching previous versions and could not download the latest version. We were actually just looking at changing this method.

For now, the download you see with the newer download date is the one you want to go with.

You may download the latest version by entering the email address you purchased with in the field at https://www.php-web-design.com/?option=com_downloads

I hope that helps.

Tim

Hi Nico,

I am happy to report that downloads from our site will now have the date they were downloaded included in the file name: ie, com_migrateme4_2023-06-21.zip

Hi Lorenzo,

I would be very happy to log into your site and take a look at this. If you would like that, please email me your super user login info and the url of your site - [email protected]

I am sure we can figure this out.

God bless,

Tim

Hi Mathias, I know I already answered your email as well, but I just saw your comment here and since it's a good question that others may ask in the future, I am going to answer here too:

The only change would be the version of Joomla that the MM4 area has after going from J3 to J4. Update the MM4 area to the latest version of J4 and push to live and you should be all good!

Thanks for using MM4!

Hi Tenenbaum!

MM4 will migrate the J3 only template, but that template will still break Joomla 4 - or at least not work with it.

MigrateMe 4 creates a staging are to test a migration from J3 to J4. The migration that happens is identical to what would happen if you ran the migration process on your live site. MM4 would not convert your template to be J4 friendly

Now about your template. If it is not J4 compatible there are a few ways to proceed before you do your migration.

My favourite one is to update the J3 site with a J3/J4 friendly template and then do the migration (as one needs to do with other none J4 extensions.)

However, if your site is fairly static, you could run the migration with MM4 and then get your site all done in J4 (including setting up a new template) and once you are happy with the results, one-click push your J4 site to live.

Back to your J3 template, if you really like the look of your J3 template you can make a template that looks just like it using an extension call Template Creator CK. If you want to now more about that, or have more questions, please email me - [email protected]

I hope that helps!

The page does actually mention extensions, templates, and plugins.

MM4 creates a staging area to test your J4 migration in. Once your J4 site is as you want it in that staging area you can then click a button and it will be pushed to replace your live J3 site.

The migration process remains the same in that staging area, so menus, modules, plugins, extensions, and templates are migrated - but as is the case with any method you have to make sure those things are J4 compatible and you should test on a copy of your live site. MM4 is by far the easiest way to create that testing environment.

Hi Ed,

That is very odd behaviour for the recaptcha on the form.

You are always welcome to email directly - [email protected]

Which, of course you have already done and I am glad ww got that 500 error vanquished!

Enjoy the rest of your migration!

Hi David,

Each time you run MM4 inside of your Joomla site, the /mm4 staging area is completely replaced as if it was the first time you ran MM4.

So if run /MM4 and then see in the staging area some things that you don't want/need in your J4 site, I would go back to the J3 site, remove those things and then run MM4 again. In this way you will keep stepping toward having a J4 site that will be the one you are happy pushing to live.

That said, if you had made a whole bunch of changes to the J4 migration in the /MM4 staging area before you found something you wanted to remove, you could still try removing it right there. A lot of things do remove just fine, but I have found some things that were "fiddly" and since the goal is to have as clean a J4 install as possible when you push it to live, I would do as much removing as possible in J3.

Sorry for the delay in replying - the holidays and the flu have had me tending to support requests slower than normal.

If the site only works with debug set to "1" or "true" that means there is still something not working in J4 or the PHP version you have set. But I will admit it is very strange that is happening where the page does not work with both settings!

This has actually happened to me a couple of times recently - there is a final stage of J4 installing additional languages and if that does not complete the installation folder does not get removed. We'll try to find out what causes this quirky occurence on some installs! Thanks for reporting it!

I've seen this too and discovered it was actually my browser caching the target of that redirect - a pain indeed! I don't use Admin-Tools, so disabling that will not fix this. Trying to go to the admin login using an incognito browser tab or even clearing that install url from the browser cache is a possible work around for this.

Hi Tor,

Congrats on a successful migration from Joomla 3 to 4. I am so glad our extension helped.

Yes, you can remove the MM4 folder. In fact, if you go into the MM4 extension you will find a button which will remove that folder and the MM4 tables that were created in your database for the initial J4 testing you did. After that you can uninstall the MM4 extension from your site and you'll be free as a bird in the J4 world!

BTW, if you have already removed the MM4 extension and can't access the one click button, just remove the tables that begin with the prefix "mm4_" in your site's database - and the "mm4" folder in your file space (as you have already discovered.)

Remember to make a full backup of your site when doing the above.

God bless

Tim

Hi Mike,

Yes, I would remove the staging environment before running MM4. That will cut down on the files being copied during the migration and once successfully migrate to J4 and push that live, you'll have an unnecessary J3 copy of your site files without any DB tables.

And of course, make a backup of your J3 site and keep it in a safe place outside of the folder your Joomla site is in!

Hello Ashish,

MM4 makes a copy of every table in your Joomla 3 install, so yes, your Virtuemart and Membership Pro extensions will be present in Joomla 4 testing area that MM4 creates.

Remember, updating those (and other) extensions to the latest J4 compatible version is something you do before or after the migration test (depending on the requirement of each extension.)

If you have an further questions, remember we are here to help! - [email protected]

Hi Robb,

MM4 creates a staging area for a regular Joomla 4 Migration of your Joomla 3 site to take place in. So it doesn't change what happens when the migration happens - it creates a staging site with one click where you can test the migration and fix anything you would have had to fix anyway with a normal, core migration. With MM4, however, once you have your J4 ready to go live you can do so with one click, replacing your old Joomla 3 site. And of course if you discover something in your J4 migration that you wish you had done differently in your Joomla 3 site before migrating, you can abandon the J4 migration, do what you wish you had done and run the migration again.

So in answer to your question, the files and database of your Joomla 3 site are all migrated. When the Joomla 3 site is using the J3 default Protostar site, the Joomla 4 migration then switches to use the Joomla 4 default Cassiopeia template.

I hope that info helps. Just ask if you have any more questions!

Tim

Hi Derek,

Thanks for your message!

The isSite() function is specific to Joomla 3, so it means one or more of your extensions hasn't yet been updated to Joomla 4.x.

After running the migration, please ensure the latest Joomla 4 version of each extension - including the template - is installed, and all will then work well.

Best wishes - Barnaby

I installed MM4 first then as per instructions I should upgrade 3rd party etensions. Of course I cant upgrade any extension at this point because I have a fatl error
0 Call to undefined method Joomla\CMS\Application\AdministratorApplication::isSite()

So your installation instructions dont work in that sequence
4."Log into Joomla 4 and update 3rd party extensions."

The only way I can see this working is to update all extensions first then install MM4?

Please clarify and or elaborate?

Thank you

Hi Derek,

We have seen this before when even after using safemode in MM4 (which disables all non-core extensions) an error prevents you form logging into the admin. In once instance the admin module for a very popular shopping cart system had been updated to its latest version in Joomla 3, but it still had had deprecated code that broke Joomla 4 admin area.

Here is a video from the Joomla.org YouTube channel which shows the steps to work around that error so you can login and continue the migration work - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZO9nmdsLlFw

However, if you would like further help with that please email me at [email protected] and I will be glad to get you going.

We're also interested in knowing what file the error was in so we can add that to our experience so we can help others who run into the same issue migrating their site with or without MM4.

Tim

Hi Michael,

Thanks for the update! Really happy everything went so smoothly :-)

You can download updates from https://www.php-web-design.com/downloads/ with your email address.

Have a great day

Hi Johnny,

You'll need to update your extensions separately

Hi Sue,

It'll be in /mm4/administrator/

Have a great day!

Hi Mark

Just use MigrateMe 4 - it creates a development area for you :-)

Best wishes

Hi James

Yes you can run all my software in a localhost environment on XAMPP / MAMP / WAMP etc.

Just make sure your environment is correctly configured, i.e. all PHP extensions are installed etc., and it'll work best on PHP7.x rather than 8.x since 8.x isn't fully supported by Joomla 3.x.

Yes MM4 is similar to StageIt, and runs in /mm4/. Ideally you'd use the inbuilt Go Live function to make the new environment live - this backs up and removes the old environment, and copies the mm4 environment to the live folder.

Best wishes

Hi James,

If you're migrating Joomla 3 > 4 you won't need MigrateMe Plus, so you can safely remove it prior to running MigrateMe 4...

However, if you really want to keep both in place, you can - MigrateMe 4 creates a different environment to MigrateMe Plus, so they won't conflict - obviously though, once you've run MigrateMe 4, you can't then run MigrateMe Plus.

Best regards

Hello

This is a different software package, so there's no further discount if you already have MMP sorry about that!

Barnaby Dixon

Hello,

Please install the latest version of your plugin, and ensure it is Joomla 4 compatible.

Alternatively, rerun MigrateMe 4, but first - in configuration - set Safe Mode: Yes, and run the migration. This will detect and disable any potential problem plugins and extensions, so you have a working Joomla 4 environment.

Barnaby

Hi Rachel,

Thanks for your lovely comment!

Best wishes - Barnaby