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When you receive an update from XCENT, what you will receive is a zip file that contains the latest full version of all the files used within the entire application. However, you do not need to reinstall the application from scratch. And if there are ever any database schema changes, there will be a way to update your database without losing your existing data.
In order to know which files you need to upload, you need to be familiar with which version of the application is currently running on your site. If you aren't sure, you should use the Check Version option in your administrator interface. Each application has it's own Check Version function. For example, the XUD membership system is considered a separate application and it has it's own version information which is unique from the other main applications that it is used with. So if you are using xcAuction, there is a separate version number for both your XUD and xcAuction version.
Within the Documentation folder of the zip file you downloaded are one or more Updates documents. These documents are your guides to knowing which application files that need to be updated. When you view the Updates document, you will see that it is organized by the application version, with the most recent version on top going down to the oldest version available for that release. Each version has its own table of files that have been updated. This includes the file name and a brief description on what has been changed. You only need to install the files listed for versions newer than the version you are already have installed on your site. For example, if the current release is version 2.5.4 and your site is running version 2.5.2, you would need to upload the files listed for version 2.5.4 and also those listed for version 2.5.3. You do not need to re-install all of the files, included in the ZIP archive, but you do need to install all of the files listed for a newer version for it to work correctly on your site. If you skip files, the application may behave incorrectly.
There are a couple files usually listed in every update that you may not want to replace directly. These will be the files that contain you own configuration changes. We anticipate that some of our users will make changes to these Configuration and Language files associated with our applications. If these files have been updated, the Updates document will list the settings that have been added. To integrate the changes into your installation, you can copy just these new settings to your configuration or language files. Or, if you find that too confusing, you might just want to print a copy of your old configuration files for reference, install the new configuration files and then update the settings in the new configuration file by referring to your old settings.
If you have made customizations to any other files, the best thing to do is to save a backup version of each file and then reapply your customizations to the updated file. However, you do not need to overwrite any updated Email Template or HTML Templates if you have customized your versions of these files. You may want to look at the new versions of these files to see if you want to incorporate any changes we've made.
Note: If the current version of the application that you have installed is working fine for your purposes, and you are not interested in any of the new features that might be included in an update, then there is no reason you must install an update. You can continue to use an older version as long as you wish. However, we do recommend trying to keep your installation up to date with a fairly recent version in order to take advantage of any improvements to the application and make any future updates easier to manage.
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