MarjWyatt wrote:want to make sure that I'm understanding what is needed to upgrade to the latest stable version of Xampp.
Is an upgrade really neccessary? Not always is newer equals better.
MarjWyatt wrote:I have read this thread>
viewtopic.php?f=16&t=50988Backing up essential files and configurations seems pretty straightforward but, for what ought to be obvious reasons, I want to ensure that I don't create a whole lot of unnecessary work for myself with this upgrade
This thread is a best practice to prevent known issues. You don't have to follow all steps if you don't want to. It's your system.
MarjWyatt wrote:Am I gleaning from this thread that I must export each development's database (nearly 100) and import those databases into the new environment?
Clean exports of databases (especially for InnoDB Databases) are always highly recommend, at best with the mysql included tool mysqldump.
saving and recopying the mysql data folder CAN work, but not in all cases.
At the end: more backups are always more backups are always more backups ...