CMS Made Simple Forums

I am at a crossroads. I have created over 300+ CMS websites for a variety of nonprofits from pet rescues to American Legion posts. I build and host these sites and buy or pay for renewal of all domains, etc.

Now I am not sure what to do. Trying to update all of these sites, most with custom, responsive themes, seems like an impossible task to attempt due to the completely different structures associated with the 2.X.X. The nonprofits love these sites because they are very easy for their volunteers to add content.

Many of these websites have been active for nearly 8 years with continuous CMS updates.

Questions:
1. Is there any fairly easy way to automatically update these sites considering they all have custom themes, use content blocks, etc. I can't afford the time to manually update all of these sites.

2. Understanding the security risks of not updating these websites, what other issues may come up over the next two years? I already have them all working on version of PHP 5.6

Thanks for any suggestions.

I can see how this might seem a bit overwhelming, but you may find once you've tried a couple it's not as daunting as you think. A few things to consider:

• Are they all on the same or similar servers? (Once you've confirmed the PHP version and server settings are fine for 2.x, you don't have to do it again)
• Are you using any unsupported modules? (dealing with older, unsupported modules is the main bottleneck of upgrading)
• The custom theme shouldn't be an issue, everything gets moved to Design Manager automatically. Sometimes there's an issue with the naming structure but it's a quick fix, especially now there's Admin Search. After that you may want to tidy up unused templates and assign everything to a single design, but that's optional and just for ease of future management

I agree it's going to be a fair bit of work to do over 300+ sites, but there's not really any particular rush. 1.x isn't going to just stop working; it's stable and reliable. For my clients, I'm mostly upgrading when they want a new design or major new functionality anyway. If a major exploit gets discovered, that may require some consideration, but typically the exploits people find require very specific circumstances and can be mitigated easily on the average site.

Sorry to be so late responding to your reply. Thanks for the insight. Seems we're on the same plan for upgrading sites.