Looking for help to upgrade a device beyond vendor version.

[Tyson Vanover]

I am trying to update a Motorola Photon Q to a more recent version of android.  Unfortunately the instructions I can find don't seem to be consistent (http://trueandroid.com/upgrade-motorola-photon-q-4g-lte-xt897-to-android-5-1-lollipop-via-cm12-1-unofficial/), files are hosted on dubious sites, among other things.

Any local resources you would suggest?  I am new to this rooting/roms thing.

[Gary Peck]

CyanogenMod sometimes lags behind some of the less official ROMs out
there (e.g. the ones hosted on dubious sites) in terms of features, but
comes from a reputable and reliable source. I usually recommend people
start with the CyanogenMod ROM and only branch out to more obscure ROMs
if the CyanogenMod ROM for their device is missing critical
functionality.

For the Motorola Photon Q, here's CyanogenMod's installation
instructions: https://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Install_CM_for_xt897.
You'll probably want to download one of the "stable" builds rather than
a nightly: https://download.cyanogenmod.org/?device=xt897&type=snapshot.

Gary