How to Upgrade to MaxGalleria 2.0

One of our customers posted a question on the forums about upgrading to MaxGalleria 2.0, and whether or not it will be a seamless upgrade. Apparently this person has had some bad experiences from other plugins, and is naturally cautious about blindly trusting the upgrade process, especially one such as ours with significant changes. It’s understandable, so let me explain how this will work.

1. Backup

In all honesty, our upgrade process is pretty straightforward and low-risk, but I’d feel awful if I didn’t recommend backing up your WordPress files and database and then you lose something during the upgrade process. So be safe, take a few extra minutes,  and just do it.

2. Make Note of What You Are Using

Specifically, you need to check if you have any of the following:

– Galleries that use the Image Carousel template
– Galleries that use the Image Showcase template
– Galleries that use the Image Slider template
– Galleries that use the Video Showcase template
– Galleries that contain YouTube videos
– Galleries that contain Vimeo videos

This is important because each of those 6 things are now separate addons. Remember, for current MaxGalleria customers, these 6 addons are available to you at no additional cost (go to the Downloads section of your account and look under “Additional Downloads”).

It’s also important to know that the Image Tiles template and the Video Tiles template are included in the free core plugin, so no worries there.

3. Upgrade the Core Plugin

You should see an upgrade notice in your WP admin, but if not you can grab the core MaxGalleria plugin from the plugin repository. Then perform the update like you would for any other plugin update. Your existing galleries will remain as they are and you won’t lose anything.

4. Install Any Additional Addons

If your galleries only used the Image Tiles template, then you shouldn’t have anything else to do; your galleries will operate as they did before. However, there are other scenarios that require you to install one of the 6 addons mentioned above:

And remember, current MaxGalleria customers get these 6 addons at no additional cost (go to the Downloads section of your account and look under “Additional Downloads”).

5. That’s It

And that should do it. Overall pretty straightforward and fairly painless, and your galleries will continue to work just like they did before the upgrade.