typo3 update from 4.2 to 6/7

Question

On a new project I have to upgrade a old typo3 installation from 4.2 to 6.2 or even 7.6.

The big problem is, that everything is done with templavoila and all extensions are pibased.

I learned with typo3 6.x all pibased extensions will die. But with my research now I found out that pibased extensions can still run in newer typo3 versions.

My question now is, is it smart to stay with pibased extensions and templavoila? The alternative is to create the page new with extbase and fluid-templates new from scratch. Or is there a better way?

The last thing is I will have to maintain this page and I have not much knowledge in templavoila. I also understand extbase extensions much better than pibased ones. But the time difference between keeping everything with pibase and templavoila and creating the whole page from scratch is months.

So I am not sure which way I shall suggest. What are your experiences?

Answer 1

On TYPO3 ver. 6.x some pibased extension may work - after fixing some things. I don't remember status of TemplaVoila, but it's rather not optimistic on 6.1+

On ver. 7.x they won't work anymore! most of 4.x API methods was removed and replaced with new ones (6.x were the last versions where they was marked as depreciated but still available)

So, staying with pibase and TemplaVoila is dead-end-street, you have no choice - if you want to upgrade TYPO3 version, you need to create it from the scratch. Good news is that creating extensions with Extbase/Fluid etc is much more effective than pibase, bad news is that you will need to move the content manually. If you have big instance create new site first then consider writing the data converter... If it's rather small one just spend several hours to copy-paste the content to the new one.

Answer 2

The TYPO3 road map at https://typo3.org/typo3-cms/roadmap/ and the TYPO3 download pages have 6.2 LTS support ending March 2017, and 7 LTS support going to November 2018. So this gives you about a year from now to keep using extensions dependent on 6.2 and develop new code at the same time. It would be good to check extension developer plans, too. I depend on at least one extension where the developer says he'll get around to a version 7, but not right now. In my opinion, Extbase is the way to go. Play with Extension Builder, to get you well on the way.