Sitecore Upgrade fom 6.6 to 8.0 Update 5. Our Sitecore 8 Upgrade Experience

Intro:

We have a small and nice website with three languages and many pages, products, forms, videos and images on it to migrate from an old Sitecore 6.6 to a Sitecore 8.0 Update five instance.

Sonar state before migration:

This is the code quality state:
Sonar state before migration:

How to migrate:

Option 1:

Jump from 6.6 to 7.0 Initial release and from
7.0 rev 130918 to 7.1 rev 130926
7.1 rev 130926 to 7.2 rev 140228
7.2 rev 140228 to 7.5 rev 141003
7.5 rev 141003 to 8.0 rev 141212
8.0 rev 141212 to 8.0 rev 150427

This is the official way, but for me way too long.

Option 2:
Do a Sitecore package with data templates, config, branches, content items,... all you need for the new site. Move the code solution to a new git repository and make it better,
Special case for files and videos: Use serialization.

My Learnings:

- export large data with serialization
- partial language fallback: Never set checkbox "Enable fallback" field in standard values --> causes infinite loop
- ashx fileextension  in media link  --> support helps with that: https://kb.sitecore.net/articles/998758

Sonar state before migration:

This will be getting even less.



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