Geeklog Forums

I'm about to upgrade to GL 1.3.8 because it has some really nice improvements -- especially the search improvements. My question is about plugins. The installation instructions say to rename my current GL directory and install the new one in its place. It says nothing about how to handle plugins when upgrading. Since all the plugin files go in subdirectories of the public_html (GL home) can I assume that I should first untar the new GL package, letting it create the default subdirectories, then move my old files over into the admin dir, the plugins dir, the layout dir and so on? I'm using these plugins: filemgmt, external, forum, stats, and staticpages. The installation of plugin puts a bunch of files all over the place for each plugin. Is there any simple way to do the upgrade, as far as the plugins go? How about this: What if were to back up my current install by copying public_html (recursively) to public_html_backup, then put the tarball for GL 1.3.8 into public_html and untar it in place. That should overwrite most files and directories, but leave other things in place -- like the filemanagement plugin and its various directories. I assume that the staticpages plugin would get overwritten with the new one, since that's part of the default install. Would this work? Or would it be better to somehow install the new version as a separate installation, and test it out, before switching over to it? Sorry if this sounds a bit confused, but the upgrade instructions are unclear to me on these points, and since I'm upgrading a live site that matters a lot to me, I want to get it right! Thanks.