[TYPO3-english] Re: Advice needed for creating a new version of an existing website

[Mattia B]

Hi Peter,
thanks for the answer.
Below some comments.

> Hi Mattia,
> 
> As I am currently porting a website from 4.2.6 to 6.2 as well, I take 
> the liberty to answer here. It's right, many of the old extensions are 
> not compatible with 6.2 - some can be dropped, others substituted, some 
> work. The main difficulty I encountered though was to convert the 
> database to the current version (both charsets and collations have to be 
> converted to UTF-8).

Isn't it as easy as running `php typo3/cli_dispatch.phpsh smoothmigration migrate fixCharsetAndCollation`?
 
> Since the website graphics (I take this to be the layout) has to be made 
> anew, it might in fact be easiest to start from scratch and just re-use 
> the database so that the content doesn't get lost. 

Right now I don't know how data is stored in database and by which extensions, so I was trying to gradually update each extension in the attempt of getting to a new database structure already correctly mapped to the updated extensions set, but I still don't know if it's even feasible.
I guess I couldn't just keep the database as is, install a new version of typo3 and hope for relations and functionality to be automatically reproduced in the new website. But as I said I'm still learning how typo3 works and I imagine this would be a complex task even for an experienced developer.

> Luckily, due to new 
> features in the 6.2 version, I could get rid of many extensions that had 
> been used. And yes, I would stay with 6.2 for the time being.

Good to know.

> Cheers,
> Peter
> 

Thanks again for the advice!
Mattia