Starting again

I have a site based on Sitefinity 4.1 and I built it using the Charity Starter Kit.

To be honest the whole thing has been a bit of a train wreck and I've been scared to touch anything for fear of the thing just falling apart and now, forced by circumstance to add some functionality, I find I can't event get my project to load on my local machine as I get the dreaded 'Invalid root node configured for pages. No root node with the name of "FrontendSiteMap" ' error when I try and run it.

So, I've decided the best thing to do is to upgrade my local install to the latest version of Sitefinity and start again.

Surprisingly, I'm less unhappy at the thought of this than I should be. However, I want some advice before I start and, to that end, I'd like ask a couple of questions.

Assume for the purposes of answering that I'm a relatively competent C# programmer, am familiar with Telerik controls (esp ASP.NET AJAX) but am little more than a virgin wrt Sitefinity.

What is my best option for getting my LOCAL version of Sitefinity to the latest version (4.4?) Should I just completely remove my old installation and reinstall? Should I wait for v5.0 and then upgrade?

What is my best plan for creating a modifiable VS project using my new Sitefinity project? I DO NOT want to use the charity starter kit (or any other for that matter) as I'm fairly sure that this was part of the problem I had last time.

when you get the FrontendSiteMap error, are you using SQL Server or express? If SQL Server, this error is usually a result of the db user having a schema other than "dbo" (or whatever schema was originally used by the user).

How big is the site (pages, content items, etc)? I would only recommend starting from scratch if copying all the content items won't be a big project in of itself. This could be automated using the API but will involve you either using web services or setting up the sites to talk to each other using alternate providers and the API...

Are you attempting to go from 4.1 to 4.4? have you attempted to go first to 4.2, then 4.3 and finally 4.4?

Dear Stuart
You can not take 4.1 directly to 4.4 or 5.0 you need the steps in between sorry.
My advice. Byte the bullet. Wait for 5.0 and start from scratch if this is not to much work. Might be the same amount of time like taking 4.1 to 4.2 to 4.4 to 5.0
Just a thought to consider.
Markus

I get this error using SQL Server. You are correct that all of the tables are owned not by dbo but by the SQL admin user my host provider requires me to us. However, I can access Sitefinity just fine on the production server, just not on my local dev machine. -- Stuart

is it possible for you to make a schema that matches your production machine and assign it to that user? I seem to recall doing this in the past for a pesky host that wouldn't let me change to dbo on the production server...

There already was an appropriate schema and a user to match, but there was no login associated with that user. I added the login, did the association and then it worked. So, the question is, do I take the chance and upgrade my 4.1 system to 4.4, even if it means doing it one step at a time?

If I do choose to upgrade, am I right in assuming I can go from my 4.1 version (not sure of the build off hand), to 4.2.1733 then to 4.3.1885 and then to 4.4.2117?