Dear All,
Attempts to upgrade to Liferay 6.1 have so far met with somewhat annoying expenses and less progress than I would have hoped.
However, some good things have happened.
A German programmer named Daniel Brietner did some coding and finally wrote me the following email:
"Hi Daniel,
What I did
I created two portlets:
An export portlet and an import portlet. The export portlet is to be used in Liferay 5.2, the import portlet works with Liferay 6.1.
The export portlet reads all users and roles from the liferay database and puts it into a datafile (content.csv).
This file should be stored on a USB stick or so because it will be used with the import portlet.
The import portlet only consists of an upload button and does nothing else but to read in the data file and to create the users and roles.
What Chris Stavros should do
1) Deploy export portlet to Liferay 5.2, click the button and save the data file
2) Deploy import portlet to Liferay 6.1 , upload the data file.
That´s all ;)
After that you should take a look at the portal to verify that all data is uploaded correctly.
This is something you can do again and again: Create a new data file and upload to it 6.1 and you should have all the new users.
What needs to be done in the future
My concept was to read in all the data you want to migrate (all users with all their data - names, email adresses etc etc etc) and put it into a text file.
This is exactly what needs to be done by whoever is going to finish this.
The person who is implementing it, should get a list of all entities to transform and then create the code to transform those entities to pure text and create the code to transform the lines of text into 6.1 entities and to store them.
1) Make a list of everything that you want to be migrated
2) Send this list to a liferay developer of your choice and tell him: We need every bit of data. Please call every getter of the entities you need to migrate and store the data into the csv file.
Then also create the code to read in the datafile in Liferay 6.1 and create the entities from new. Apply all data you´ve read in from Liferay 5.2.
export:
Please take a look at ModelToCSVFactory.java and create a Converter for every entity. Call the Converter in DownloadRessourcesServlet, convert the ressources and add the csv lines to the resulting file
import:
Take a look at the ImportConverterFactory - it will show you how to read in the data and how to create the entities.
I think this is all ...

"
I have the two portlets he wrote, if anyone is interested in helping with this. Chris Stavros owns Omegabit that hosts this place.
What we need to be migrated is basically everything: Discussion, Wiki, Users, Roles, Permission, Theme, etc.
The portlets to migrate users is just the first step.
Any coders out there interested in helping with this? Otherwise, current projections are it will cost me a few grand, which I don't really want to spend on that at the moment, having other house projects (such as air conditioner that just died, concrete driveway that desperately needs repair, etc.) that really need the cash applied to them at this time.
Advantages of Liferay 6.1: many, among other things being able to open the wiki up a lot to outside input and collaboration.
Anyway, let me know if you are a coder or know of a coder who can help.
Thanks very much for considering this,
Daniel
Founder and Funder of the DhO