Steven Zahm@ Nigel
re: I only bought it just over a year ago and having had the site crash completely when updating before, I left it alone.
Sorry to hear you had trouble upgrading before. I looked thru my emails and I couldn’t find anything from your about it … but such occurrences are very rare. I believe the 0.8.x versions there were a couple issues for users still on really old version of PHP, but those issues have long since been dealt with.
re: Will it be safe to update the core plugin from the WotrdPress plugin updater?
Should be. I am not aware of any major issues, just very minor bugs here and there but there are always bugs in all software.
re: How do I update to the latest versions of CMap and the Form extension?
You can download the updates from your purchase history.
To update, deactivate and delete the older version before installing the update. I suggest updating Connections before any extensions and templates.
After you update, go to the Connections : Settings admin page and input your support license key for cMap and Form. After you do, you will be notified in the WP admin anytime there is an update released and you will be able to use the WP updater to do the update just like other plugins.
re: Will any customisation to the Form fields (mainly text) be retained.
Depends on how you made the changes. If you edited the php files, the changes will be lost. If you used the Say What? plugin to change text, the changes will be safe. You will however have to change the text domain because Form now reuses the code for the metaboxes from Connections rather than duplicate code. This make is easier to maintain and creates less bugs.
re: I want to add Link so that subscribers can edit their entries. Will existing entries automatically be converted to WordPress users?
Connections and Link does not convert entries to WordPress users … it links the two to allow a WordPress user to edit “their” directory entry. The accounts are linked by email address. Once the accounts are linked, the links are persistent so they will remain linked even if the email address in the Connections entry or WordPress user is changed.
Hope that answers your questions thoroughly!