Upgrading guidelines

This document describes aspects of the system which should be given particular attention when upgrading Wagtail or its dependencies.

Critical paths

The following areas of functionality are critical paths for the site which don't have full automated tests and should be checked manually.

1. Content Management

• Creating, editing, and publishing pages: Test the functionality of creating new pages, editing existing content, and publishing changes.
• Content organization and navigation: Verify that the site's content hierarchy and navigation structure are maintained correctly after the upgrade.
• Media management: Check the uploading, storage, and retrieval of media files, such as images and documents.

2. Templates and Styling

• Front-end templates: Test the rendering of templates to ensure they display as expected after the upgrade.
• Styling and CSS: Check that the site's stylesheets and design elements are correctly applied and maintained.

3. Performance and Caching

• Page loading speed: Monitor the site's performance and loading times to ensure the upgrade doesn't introduce any significant slowdowns.
• Caching mechanisms: Verify that caching mechanisms, such as page caching and database caching, are working correctly.

Other considerations

As well as testing the critical paths, these areas of functionality should be checked:

• Other places where you know extra maintenance or checks may be necessary
• This could be code which you know should be checked and possibly removed - e.g. because you've patched something until a fix is merged in a subsequent release.
• Any previous fixes which may need to be updated/reapplied on subsequent upgrades
• Technical debt which could be affected by an upgrade.