Upgrade from Magento 2.2.8 to 2.3.6, which steps do i have to follow?

Question

I have a Magento store and want to Upgrade from Magento 2.2.8 to 2.3.6.

I would like to retain customers and orders, reviews, newsletter data, category and products. Current store using Porto theme and no other heavy 3rd party modules and site does not have more customization.

Other notable points

• Catalog size around 2K
• Customers and orders around 2000
• Single domain with single store, no storeview

Here are the steps that are following:

• Taken backup of code base
• Taken backup of database
• downloaded latest Porto theme
• PHP version changed to latest 7.4
• All 3rd party modules are downloaded compatible with Magento 2.3
• will be running following command composer require magento/product-community-edition=2.3.6 --no-update composer update -vvv then regular m2 upgrade commands with var,generated remove and all

Question:

• Are the above steps enough to go ahead with Magento upgrade? Just want to make sure that I have seen a lots of questions related to 2.2.x to 2.3.x?
• do i have to create a separate theme? Is it good?
• Any hints on Porto theme upgrade, I do have latest Porto theme version.

Answer 1

1. Yes you can run the magento upgrade command first and then normal command like deploy, upgrade, indexing and caching.

2. If you want then you can create separate theme, but in this case that things can't help you because you already install the porto and you want to upgrade the Porto that why.

NOTE: Remember, when you upgrade theme or extension any change that you have done have been override, so be carefully while doing this one.