How to upgrade from Kirby 2

Kirby 3 comes with a wealth of new features and changes under the hood. In this guide we go through the steps necessary to upgrade your existing Kirby 2 site to Kirby 3 step by step.

Requirements and installation

Dropped support for PHP < 8.0

Kirby 3 now requires PHP 8.0+. Please check if your server supports this PHP version before upgrading.

No Kirby CLI support

The Kirby CLI is no longer compatible with Kirby 3. Kirby and extensions can instead be installed manually, with Git or with Composer.

Folder and file structure

Replace core files and folders

1. Replace the old /kirby folder with the new /kirbyfolder.
2. The old index.php is no longer compatible. Replace it with the new one.
3. If you are on an Apache server, replace the old .htaccess file with the new one. On other servers, change your server configuration accordingly.

Delete the thumbs folder

Thumbnails and other media files are now located in /media and no longer in the /thumbs folder. Removing it should be enough. Thumbnails will be recreated in the /media folder automatically afterwards.

New number separator for folders: underscore

To fix many of the sorting number issues in Kirby 2, we changed the ordering number separator of the content folder names from

to

To change the sorting numbers of all your content folders, put the following script into your document root next to the index.php and run it with http://yourdomain.com/upgrade.php. Delete this file afterwards.

<?php

require __DIR__ . '/kirby/bootstrap.php';

Kirby\Cms\System::upgradeContent(__DIR__ . '/content');

'routes' => [
    [
        'pattern' => 'upgrade',
        'action'  => function() {
            return Kirby\Cms\System::upgradeContent(kirby()->root('content'));
        }
    ]
]

Delete accounts and avatars

The Kirby 2 accounts and avatars are not compatible with Kirby 3. Please delete your /site/accounts and assets/avatars folders and install accounts from scratch. If that is not an option, because you have too many accounts, make sure to read the user account migration guide.

License

Kirby 3 requires a license file instead of the K2 config setting. The license file will be generated when you enter your license information in the Panel. You should remove the K2 config setting.

Custom folder setup

The custom folder setup is no longer done in site.php but in your index.php.

Panel

Remove /panel folder

The Panel folder has been integrated into the /kirby folder to make updates easier. Therefore, the old Panel folder has to be removed.

Move and adapt page blueprints

Page blueprints are no longer located in /site/blueprints, but in /site/blueprints/pages. Moving them to the subdirectory should be enough as a first step. The site.yml blueprint remains in /site/blueprints.

Remove subpage and file settings from blueprints

The old subpage and file settings are no longer compatible with Kirby 3. Files are now added via files sections, subpages via pages sections, and files get their own blueprints with meta data:

• Pages sections
• Files sections
• File meta data

The fields will work as before but you might want to restructure them to leverage the new layout features sections, columns and tabs that give you much more control over the look of forms in the Panel.

Sort numbering of subpages

The num blueprint option to set the numbering scheme for pages is no longer set in the parent page blueprint, but in the page blueprint to which the numbering is actually applied. Details: General blueprint options

Remove blueprint-based subpage builder

The option to auto-create subpages via a blueprint setting no longer exists. You can use a page.create:after hook to achieve the same instead. In fact, you can even define a custom blueprint setting that completely recreates this functionality using Kirby's new $page->blueprint() method.

In your blueprint:

subpage_builder:
  - title: Gallery
    uid: gallery
    template: gallery
    num: 1
  - title: Info
    uid: info
    num: 2
    template: info

In your config.php:

'hooks' => [
  'page.create:after' => function ($page) {
    $builder = $page->blueprint()->subpage_builder();
    if(!empty($builder)) {

      foreach($builder as $build) {
        $missing = A::missing($build, array('title', 'template', 'uid'));
        if(!empty($missing)) continue;
          try {
            $subPage = $page->createChild([
              'content'  => ['title' => $build['title']],
              'slug'     => $build['uid'],
              'template' => $build['template'],
            ]);

          } catch (Exception $error) {
            throw new Exception($error);
          }
          if($subPage) {
            $subPage->publish();
            if(isset($build['num'])) $subPage->sort($build['num']);
          }

         }
    }

  }
]

Rename field readonly option

The option to make a field readonly (readonly: true) has been replaced with the disabled property: disabled: true. Change your blueprints accordingly.

Remove invalid field types

The following field types no longer exist and have to be replaced:

• user field → users field
• page field → pages field
• image field → files field
• checkbox field → toggle field
• datetime field → date field with time option

Also remove or update custom field types, see plugins and extensions.

When moving from the old user, page and image fields to the Kirby 3 users, pages and files fields, keep in mind that the new fields store their data in yaml format.

Dashboard and widgets

The Kirby 2 Dashboard no longer exists in Kirby 3. With the Dashboard, Panel widgets are gone. Widgets can be replaced with custom Panel sections.

Configuration

Syntax changes

In addition to Config::set(), the standard way of adding options is now to use a return statement that returns an array of options:

<?php
return [
    'debug'  => true,
    'someOtherSetting' => 'something'
];

These options can be called with $kirby->option('someSetting').

Removed or changed config options

• The ssl config option has been removed. This should be handled in your .htaccess file or in your server configuration.

• panel.session.timeout/panel.session.lifetime are now handled via the session options.

Frontend

Date method

The special date() method has been removed, because it lead to confusions. It must be replace with the toDate() field method.

<?= $page->date('Y-m-d') ?>

becomes

<?= $page->date()->toDate('Y-m-d') ?>

This now works with all date fields, no matter what the date field is called.

Kirbytext() helper

When rendering Kirbytext in your templates, replace occurrences of the kirbytext() helper that convert field values from

<?= kirbytext($page->somefield()) ?>

with

<?= $page->somefield()->kirbytext() ?>

You can continue to use the kirbytext() helper with strings that contain Kirbytext.

Custom routes

Custom routes starting with the string api will not work anymore, because api is now reserved by Kirby, unless you change the API slug to something else, see API configuration.

Accessing arguments from the router in controllers

The ways to access arguments from the router has changed from

<?php

return function ($site, $pages, $page, $args) {

  // $args contains all arguments from the current route

};

to

<?php

return function ($kirby) {

  $args = $kirby->route()->arguments();
    // contains all arguments from the current route

};

In your route, you can also pass all arguments explicitly to the ->render() method to make them directly accessible in the controller. Read more ›

Page status

Filter methods like visible(), invisible() and related pages methods have been replaced with listed/unlisted/published and related methods.

KirbyText pre/post filters

KirbyText pre and KirbyText post filters now have to be registered as hooks.

Sending email

Email is now sent using PHPMailer. The way to set email presets and to send email has completely changed, check out the docs

Remove route filters

Route filters do no longer exist. Instead you can hook into the route event using the route:before and route:after hooks.

Authentication for frontend stuff

In Kirby 3, authentication and permissions are now integrated in every method of the Kirby API. You can no longer just call $page->delete() for example without an authenticated user. That means the user must either be logged in or you need another way to authenticate.

To keep it simple to use the internal APIs to do all sorts of things programmatically and especially when you bootstrap Kirby in your own external script, there is now a way to impersonate an existing users or to create a temporary admin, who can do all those awesome things:

Impersonating an existing user

<?php

require 'kirby/bootstrap.php'; // this is  only required in external scripts

// impersonating an existing user
$kirby = new Kirby([
    'users' => [
        [
            'email' => 'bastian@getkirby.com',
            'role'  => 'admin'
        ]
    ]
]);

$kirby->impersonate('bastian@getkirby.com');
$kirby->page('some/page')->delete();

Impersonating the kirby super user

<?php

require 'kirby/bootstrap.php'; // this is  only required in external scripts

$kirby = kirby();
$kirby->impersonate('kirby');
$kirby->page('some/page')->delete();

Various method changes

• $pagination->items() was removed, use $pagination->total() or $pagination->pages()
• Tpl::load() doesn't accept a third argument anymore
• the excerpt() helper method has been removed and the parameters for the $field->excerpt() method have changed
• $page->tinyurl() was removed

Multi-language installation

Defining languages

Languages are now defined in the /site/languages folder, not in your /site/config.phpfile anymore. Users can now add or remove new languages through the Panel, if the languages option is enabled in the config settings.

Accessing languages

Use $kirby->languages() instead of $site->languages().

Fetching language variables

Language variables are no longer fetched via l()/l::get() but via the t() helper.

Users and permissions

User roles

User roles can no longer be defined in the config settings, but solely by adding user blueprints.

Permissions

User permissions are now defined in .yml files, not .php files like in Kirby 2. Also, the available permissions have changed to make them easier to implement. On the other hand that means that currently some functionality for fine-grained control of user access is not available.

Accessing the $user object

The user object is no longer accessed via the $site but via the $kirby object. All references to $site->user() have to be replaced by $kirby->user().

Toolkit

The toolkit has been completely rewritten, new methods have been added, others removed. Some classes have been removed from the toolkit and moved into their own packages, see list below:

The Toolkit classes are now in the Kirby\Toolkit namespace.

Plugins and Extensions

Kirby 2 sites with a lot of plugins will require the most effort. Plugins have to be moved to our new plugin syntax. Many plugins developers have already converted their plugins to Kirby 3. Some plugins might no longer be necessary, because their functionality is covered by native Kirby 3 features. Other plugins might not have been ported yet.

As a first step you have to remove your plugins so that your site doesn't break. This means removing the plugin folders, but also removing custom fields from blueprints and removing functionality that is added through these plugins.

As a next step, replace old plugins with new ones where available and/or port your own plugins with the help of our guides.

KirbyTags

KirbyTags are now defined in a plugin file.

Miscellaneous

Kirbytext properties

The popup: yes property in a link KirbyTag becomes target: _blank:

(link: http://wikipedia.org text: Wikipedia target: _blank)

Filenames

Media filenames starting with an underscore (e.g. _dsc9876.jgg are ignored in Kirby 3. You need to rename such files.

Getting stuck?

If you run into any kind of upgrade issue, please help us by letting us know in the forum or by creating a ticket: https://github.com/getkirby/kirby/issues

Please only create tickets if you are pretty sure it is a Kirby issue.