Updating an old installation

Maybe you haven’t updated s2Member in many months, or years even, and many versions were released since the one you're using. That’d a big jump in versions and there could be trouble when you update to the latest.

Here are some recommended steps you may want to consider:

– Make sure you have s2Member’s Deactivation Safeguards enabled. This wasn’t always enabled by default, and your installation may be old enough that it’s disabled. Dashboard -› s2Member -› General Options -› Deactivation Safeguards

– Create a backup of everything in your site (e.g. files, database).

– Check that your server is ready for the latest s2Member. The latest release may require some things that the old one didn’t. Use our server scanner find any issues and follow the suggestions given to solve them. See: Knowledge Base » s2Member Server Scanner

– Clone the live site to have a development copy you can work on and break without affecting your customers during your tests. See:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Moving_WordPress#Moving_WordPress_to_a_New_Server
http://codex.wordpress.org/Running_a_Development_Copy_of_WordPress

– Try the update to the latest release in the development copy you just created. See:
s2Member Framework Update
s2Member Pro Update

– If you have trouble updating straight to the latest release, then try doing the updates little by little. Keep notes of the steps you take so you can reproduce them later in the live site after you succeed. Here you can find previous releases:
http://wordpress.org/plugins/s2member/developers/
http://s2member.com/release-archive/

– As part of your tests, remember to review the site to make sure everything is working correctly. There may be conflicts with other plugins or your theme, that weren’t there before. See: Troubleshooting Tips

– Once you succeed updating the dev copy to the latest version and have everything working fine, make a new backup of the live site and take the same successful steps there to update s2Member to the latest release.

If you don’t know how to do one or more of these steps, you may want to google it, or get someone to do it for you. You can find freelancers in sites like jobs.wordpress.net, freelancer.com, upwork.com or elance.com.