A practical Joomla 6 upgrade rehearsal

Start with a dependency inventory, enable maximum error reporting on the copy, and exercise every authenticated workflow. The copy matters because a green administrator dashboard does not prove that submissions, webhooks, or scheduled tasks still work.

I also compare the database schema before and after the rehearsal. That exposed an extension whose files updated correctly while one migration never ran.

Our final gate is a short rollback drill. Knowing how long restoration actually takes changed the maintenance window we communicate to members.