[TYPO3-english] Upgrde strategy

[Urs Braem]

Hi

I am currently doing a few 4.5->6.2 upgrades, and I've been asking myself if I'm following the right strategy. 
I thought I'd do it like this to avoid long "content freeze" times for clients:

PART 1
- Make fresh dev copy of live site
- Do all the upgrading work, if in database, make notes (can take long at the beginning)
- Test dev site
- When ok, declare "content freeze"

PART 2
- Make a staging copy from live (where editors have made changes), do the core update again
- Pull in upgraded templates and extension from dev copy
- Test staging site

PART 3
- Deploy staging site and end content freeze

Now that is very tedious. What are your experiences and recommendations?

I thought about simply declaring a longer content freeze period, or limiting content changes to some parts, e.g. News.
Or - hold your breath - about syncing the dev and the staging database - I've heard that this could be done with Navicat.