With the releases of Sitecore 7.5 and Sitecore 8 in the last 6 months, there has been a lot of interest from clients in upgrading from their current 6.x versions to the latest and greatest Sitecore platform version. This upgrade process always entails an examination of the modules involved in a solution. Keystone for Sitecore is no different. If you change versions of Sitecore, you will likely need to change which version of the Keystone software you have installed in your build.

How Keystone works with different versions of Sitecore

When Keystone packages are released, each package targets a specific version of Sitecore. This means that for any version of Keystone, there are multiple installation packages, one for each major Sitecore version. For example, Keystone 4.6 has a package for Sitecore 7.2, a package for Sitecore 7.5, and a package for Sitecore 8.

As an example scenario, let us assume that you have previously installed a version of Keystone into your Sitecore 7.2 site. Now, while upgrading your solution to Sitecore 8, you will need to get the new Keystone installer for Sitecore 8 to replace your version of Keystone with the one that works with Sitecore 8.

How to upgrade

If you haven’t made any changes to the installed Keystone files, you can update Keystone by just installing the correct Keystone package for your target Sitecore version. This will update all binaries, pipelines, configurations, sublayouts, and views with the versions for the Sitecore version you need.

If you have made edits to any of the files installed by the Keystone package, you will want to backup your version of the file, and then re-apply your changes after the upgrade. For the most part, Keystone views, sublayouts, and configurations are the same for all versions of Sitecore, so this process is quite simple. However, Keystone binaries and Sitecore override XMLs are tightly tied to the targeted version of Sitecore. There are also a few other configuration files, especially those related to Lucene, that are different based on the version of Sitecore.

Need more help?

Obviously, the best place to get support for your upgrade is by contacting the Keystone product team directly. The website is over at http://www.keystoneforsitecore.com,

Alternatively, you can contact the Keystone folks directly at info@keystoneforsitecore.com