How can I Duplicate Zen Cart shop directory (same server) ?

[zcnb]

Before you "operate" your cloned store, you will probably need to run FIX CACHE KEY.

Thank you very much for this tip, fairestcape. This is exactly the kind of Zen Cart specific information that I needed and I can't get from a general purpose MySQL newsgroup.

I intend to eventually post in this forum a step-by-step HowTo that describes how to duplicate a Zen Cart store directory, including a duplicate (i.e. not linked) database. I hope that this will help others as much as other posters helped me so far.

In the meanwhile here is a slight (but important) correction to the 'cp' shell command posted above:

~/public_html> cp -Rp shop testshop

This correction will preserve the original store's permissions (important for security). It assume a Linux host.

Also, here is a link to to FIX CACHE KEY add-on you mentioned.

Lastly, here is another useful link that describes how to backup and restore the database, although it seems to me that this not really what you mean by "use phpMyAdmin to make a copy of the database". The reason is that it restores from backup to the exact same database, with the exact same name. Is my observation correct?

If so, I think that what you were referring to by "use phpMyAdmin to make a copy of the database" is the "Copy database to:" in "Operations" tab in phpMyAdmin. Is this correct?