Below are some important notes on upgrading to Confluence 5.2.3. For details of the new features and improvements in this release, please read the Confluence 5.2 Release Notes.

Note on version numbers: The first publicly available release for this major version is Confluence 5.2.3. Confluence 5.2.0 to 5.2.2 were internal releases only. 

On this page:

Preparing your team for Confluence 5

Confluence 5.0 introduced a number of significant changes to the user experience: a new way of creating content, a redesigned header, a new sidebar, and other changes to the look and feel of your site. People in your organisation will need to be aware of the coming changes, so that they can plan and prepare for them. We have written a guide to help you: Planning for Confluence 5.

In addition, if you are upgrading from Confluence 3.5 or earlier please note that the change to the Confluence editing experience is significant. See the guide to Planning for Confluence 4.

Upgrade notes

Changes in preparation for the ability to rename users

With Confluence 5.3, we plan to provide the ability to change usernames. This functionality is not yet complete and won't be fully delivered in 5.2, however 5.2 will include the underlying schema changes necessary to support the feature. As of Confluence 5.2, users now have a new, unique, permanent key as well as the already-existing, unique username.

For plugin developers: There are a number of API changes, and your plugin will need to migrate its existing data to user keys instead of usernames. See our developer's guide to Preparing for Confluence 5.2, specifically Renamable Users in Confluence 5.2.

Lucene Upgrade

With Confluence 5.2, we have upgraded the Lucene search library to version 4.3 as part of larger efforts to make search better and faster.

For plugin developers: If you have implemented the Extractor interface in your plugin, then this upgrade introduces breaking changes. To update your plugin. See How to fix broken Extractors.

Advance notice: end of support for MS SQL 2005 

We are planning to end support for MS SQL 2005 in Confluence 5.3. See End of Support Announcements for Confluence for more information.

Advance notice: end of support for the Social Bookmarking plugin

We are planning to end support for the Social Bookmarking Plugin in Confluence 5.3.  

Upgrade procedure

Note: Upgrade to a test environment first. Test your upgrades in your test environment before rolling them into production.

If you are already running a version of Confluence, please follow these instructions to upgrade to the latest version:

  1. Before you upgrade, we strongly recommend that you back up your Confluence Home Directory and database. See the documentation on backing up your Confluence site. If you are using an external database, perform a database backup.
  2. If your version of Confluence is earlier than 5.1, read the  release notes and upgrade guides for all releases between your version and the latest version.
  3. Download the latest version of Confluence.
  4. Follow the instructions in the Upgrade Guide.

Checking for known issues and troubleshooting the Confluence upgrade