How to Duplicate/Mirror a Store on the Same Server/Account

[kuroi]

Currently Zen Cart supports only complete site shutdown, so making certain products visible only to the store admin is not possible. It would be nice if Zen Cart supported such "partial down for maintenance". That's what I meant by "Zen Cart's current state".

Fair point, though difficult to tie down tight enough for inclusion in the code. I suspect that there would be a steady stream of things people would like to partially allow, and a ton of exceptional coding to deal with the increasingly complex possibilities - but that could just be becasue I haven't spent enough time thinking about how to make it simple.

However, that said, there is a way of doing specifically what you have descibed. Here's how ...

You create a category for hidden products and then set its status to off. Products inside this category should then be excepted from the index listing. You can then create your product in this category and access it for testing by tweaking the products_id in the product_info page URL. when you're happy that it's OK, use the move product in the admin categories page to transfer it to its final home.

[Stuff4Toys]

This is an incredibly interesting and informative thread.

Hello, I'm new here ... just joined today because I wanted to ask how to do more or less this very thing!

I have had a single ZC store for a while, and I'm starting a new operation for different products aimed at different customers, so I thought the easiest way would be to duplicate the existing store and edit the copy to make a similar new one, ending up with two completely independent stores.

BUT, I'm using UK2 for everything and they only allow a single MySql database per domain, so I'm struggling.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Looks like this didn't get answered without causing you to have to spend more money.

When you created your first ZenCart installation, unless you changed it, the tables were all created with the prefix zen_
When you install the second copy change the prefix to zen1_ or backup_ or anything_else_.

This will allow you to run two copies on one database.

CAVEAT: when you use phpMYadmin to export and import your data, you will first have to open the .sql file in a text editor and search and replace the zen_ for zen1_

JOhn ><>

[DrByte]

CAVEAT: when you use phpMYadmin to export and import your data, you will first have to open the .sql file in a text editor and search and replace the zen_ for zen1_

CAVEAT #2 ... DO NOT EVER DO A BLIND search-and-replace FOR "zen_" with anything else. There are a lot more than just table-names using "zen_" in the database.
If you do a blind search-and-replace, you'll end up with, at the very least, all your admin configuration menus not working.
If you must do a rename within the SQL file, it's better to treat each table individually, manually.

[customk1]

ok, reviving this thread...
i have recently followed the directions as originally listed, and i THOUGHT i did everything right... however i am getting this page, when i try to load the test site, i get a page called 'connection problem'... hopefully it will load for you to see.

regular site is www.customk9design.com

test site is www.customk9design.com/testcatalogzen

any suggestions?

[Stuff4Toys]

ok, reviving this thread...
i have recently followed the directions as originally listed, and i THOUGHT i did everything right... however i am getting this page, when i try to load the test site, i get a page called 'connection problem'... hopefully it will load for you to see.

regular site is www.customk9design.com

test site is www.customk9design.com/testcatalogzen

any suggestions?

More than likely a path issue in your configure.php

JOhn ><>

[customk1]

1st off, thank you very much John... you were correct... i had made a mistake in following the directions on changing the configure.php files... i mis-read the line db_server_username... and i had put the database name in both spots instead of username on one, password on the next and database name on the 3rd.

soooo, now that thats fixed, i have two additional questions.
1. will password protecting the whole folder "testcatalogzen" prevent anyone else from looking at it, as well as prevent it from being crawled by search engines?

2. i dont want to make any changes to my cart... as some previous posters were concerned about... i did this duplicate only for cosmetic reasons... color changes, image updates etc. i believe that 95% of the changes are stored within the file system as opposed to the database, so simply copying them over to overwrite (or rename folders, testcatalogzen to catalogzen, and catalogzen to oldcatalog or something of the like) will not affect my sql database right?
however, any changes that i make within zencart admin... such as changing a category image... that is stored within the database, so i either need to swap databases at the end, and lose data from my old database... or write a list of those types of changes, (changes made within the zencart admin) and simply duplicate them on the old database... is that correct?

thanks!
ginny

[Stuff4Toys]

1st off, thank you very much John... you were correct... i had made a mistake in following the directions on changing the configure.php files... i mis-read the line db_server_username... and i had put the database name in both spots instead of username on one, password on the next and database name on the 3rd.

No problem

soooo, now that thats fixed, i have two additional questions.
1. will password protecting the whole folder "testcatalogzen" prevent anyone else from looking at it, as well as prevent it from being crawled by search engines?

You can do that, or simply place a blank file called index.html in the folder. Your server should serve that file name first by default, so unless someone knows that you have an index.php in that folder it shoul dbe secure.

2. i dont want to make any changes to my cart... as some previous posters were concerned about... i did this duplicate only for cosmetic reasons... color changes, image updates etc. i believe that 95% of the changes are stored within the file system as opposed to the database, so simply copying them over to overwrite (or rename folders, testcatalogzen to catalogzen, and catalogzen to oldcatalog or something of the like) will not affect my sql database right?
however, any changes that i make within zencart admin... such as changing a category image... that is stored within the database, so i either need to swap databases at the end, and lose data from my old database... or write a list of those types of changes, (changes made within the zencart admin) and simply duplicate them on the old database... is that correct?

thanks!
ginny

There may be a better way to do this, but sounds confusing, but should be OK
JOhn ><>

[customk1]

ok, let me try to rephrase that last one, with an example. i guess the ultimate issue is that i dont know what kind of info is in an sql database...

if you go to my site, www.customk9design.com
and click on collars, you will come to a categories screen that has pro-paw, deco-paw, eco-paw and show all
if i were to change one of those images, and link it to the category thru the zencart admin, that would be a change that would be stored in the sql database, not just in the site file structure... right?
therefore when i copy over the site file structure to be the 'new site' but use the old database, the new images for the categories would not show, because the change for that is in the database, not in the file structure... is that correct?

[Stuff4Toys]

ok, let me try to rephrase that last one, with an example. i guess the ultimate issue is that i dont know what kind of info is in an sql database...

if you go to my site, www.customk9design.com
and click on collars, you will come to a categories screen that has pro-paw, deco-paw, eco-paw and show all
if i were to change one of those images, and link it to the category thru the zencart admin, that would be a change that would be stored in the sql database, not just in the site file structure... right?

Only the filename and path are stored in the dattabase so if your new file was the same name as the old one, it wouldn't care.

therefore when i copy over the site file structure to be the 'new site' but use the old database, the new images for the categories would not show, because the change for that is in the database, not in the file structure... is that correct?

Correct, that's why the thought, if you change a products image, name it the same as the old image and you woudn't have the issue.

JOhn ><>

[mhawkins]

I also am going to try my upgrade Zen cart on a different site but with the same service provider. I do have a question with the database. I plan on uploading the active store files to a new empty un-setup store that is down for maintenance. But, I am still unsure about how to access the different database. If I leave the information alone in the includes/configure.php file will it actually go to the right database or do I have to duplicate the database in the new store and point it to that database file instead. And, are there more files that I need to change to see the database. Hopefully that makes sense.
Also, if I directly copy the product from the active store database to the empty store database will it recognize the items? One database has the tables stored as zen_tablename and the other does not have the prefix of zen_. I am assuming that the prefix makes a difference, since I saw the file that denoted that prefix.
I can copy each file (table) separately to avoid the prefix if needed.