How I Successfully Upgraded a Legacy Django CMS Project to 4.1.4

March 2, 2025

Upgrading a Django CMS project from version 3.4 to 4.1.4 was long overdue, but the process was far from straightforward. Dependency conflicts, outdated plugins, and migration failures threatened to derail the upgrade. I turned to the Django CMS community for help—and that made all the difference. This is the story of how I navigated the challenges, step by step, to achieve a smooth and successful upgrade.

Project Background and Challenges

This project is an event management application owned by my employer. It’s a medium-sized project, widely used for managing event content and coordination.

The project was previously maintained by the content management team, and I wasn’t directly involved in its upkeep. Over time, the team started facing challenges with outdated plugins and performance issues, which prompted the need for an upgrade.

Upgrading a Django CMS project from version 3.4 to 4.1.4 brings enhanced performance, modern features, and long-term support. This post walks through the upgrade process step by step, ensuring a smooth transition while preserving your data.

My employer requested me to assess the project and upgrade it to the latest Django CMS version to address these ongoing challenges and improve the system's overall efficiency.

Initial Upgrade Attempt and Roadblocks

When I began the upgrade process, my initial approach was to upgrade directly from Django CMS 3.4 to 4.1.4. However, this led to several dependency issues due to outdated plugins like aldryn-forms. Removing these plugins and cleaning up related database tables temporarily allowed the project to run, but existing content was lost in the process.

I then attempted a structured migration using the djangocms-4-migration tool, hoping to transition without data loss. Despite multiple attempts (4-5 times), the data migration failed consistently, and I struggled to make any meaningful progress.

Seeking Help from the Django CMS Community

After exhausting all options, I turned to the Django CMS community through their Discord channel. The response was phenomenal — I received guidance on my issue within just a few hours. Special thanks to Fabian, who worked closely with me to identify and resolve the root causes. Following the step-by-step instructions and quick responses made the entire process much smoother, helping me preserve data integrity and complete the upgrade successfully.

Note: This guide is based on a real-world upgrade experience. I share my setps below. Your specific project requirements, however, may vary, so adapt the steps accordingly.

Manish Kumar

Key Learnings from the Upgrade Process

Through this upgrade, I gained invaluable insights into:

Version Upgrade Strategies: The importance of upgrading incrementally (first to Django CMS 3.11.9, then to 4.1.4).
Dependency Management: Identifying and resolving outdated plugins and library conflicts - even if that is painful in the beginning.
Data Migration Best Practices: Ensuring proper backups and using migration tools without compromising data integrity.
Community Collaboration: Leveraging open-source community support for efficient problem-solving.

My steps toward django CMS 4.1

Backup the Database: Before making any changes, I took a complete backup of my database to prevent any data loss: python manage.py dumpdata > backup.json
Intermediate Upgrade to Django CMS 3.11.9: I chose to upgrade to Django 3.2 for the intermediate step.
```
$ pip install 'django-cms==3.11.9'
$ pip install 'Django>=3.2,<4.0'
$ python manage.py migrate
$ python manage.py showmigrations cms
```
I made sure to see all migrations, up to 0022_auto_20180620_1551.py, marked as applied. I assume this is where I failed before.
Upgrade to Django CMS 4.1.4: I followed the steps in the djangocms-4-migration tool. They worked perfectly for me.