J-BusinessDirectory - Best Practice for Updating

I am modifying J-BD for the Japanese market and presentation of some things require that the display of particular items be modified. For example, the common method of presenting addresses is: Zip Code, Prefecture, City, City Section, another section, address, and name if required.

I have additionally modified most of the templates to meet my needs.

The recently released update V.4.5.4 apparently would overwrite many of these changes if the directory update was directly installed.

Normally, I create a copy of the present structure as backup for reference. So, if I see that a particular item is not being displayed, I can quickly copy the file from the backup to the new structure if required.

This works well when updates are not extensive, but is rather cumbersome when there are a number of updates.

An alternate way is to create a development site and do the required work on it to meet one's requirements. And then copy it over to the live website when finished.

If the main website development was complete, I think that this method would be an efficient method, but in my case, I am still developing the main website although nearly finished.

I thought that maybe exchanging some ideas on what methods have worked well and not so well for the forum members might make for some interesting discussion.

Please share your ideas with me and others!
Used Winmerge to find which files had been updated. Found that there were 52 so I did a file comparison on each to ensure that nothing I had modified was overwritten. I updated by either copying only the changed coding or by copying the whole page depending on the content. Total time was around 4 hours.

Hi,

 

Thank you for sharing the information.
In next releases we will publish also the list of modified files to make the update process easier.