Upgrading without a working store?

[creekside]

Our hosting service "godaddy.com" decided not to tell us they were dropping support for PHP4 on their hosting platforms. When our ZenCart quit working they told us the only way for us to get our site back was to upgrade PHP to ver 5.3. We have been unable to get our 1.3.8a version up and running because of the PHP version and we were wondering if there was anyone who had experienced anything like this and could give us some pointers on how to move our old site to the new ZenCart 1.5.0 installation they provided us without the upgrade option. Specific questions that come to mind are:

1. Does the MySQL Schema in 1.3.8a need upgrading to work with 1.5.0?
2. What major differences (incompatibilities between PHP4 and PHP5.3) in the code should we look out for?
3. What is the best was to test the old code in the new working area?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts and help in this area. If there is someone who has had experience with this and can help me directly please post with your email.

Thanks,

[DrByte]

Short answer: Simply identify your customizations (ie: the changes/additions you made between the v138 code and your own site), and re-make those customizations on the new version. Then do the database upgrade, as explained in the answer to your first question, given below.

There are tools to help in the process of quickly identifying your own customizations, such as file-comparison programs like WinMerge.
More info can be found in the upgrade documentation/instructions at www.zen-cart.com/upgrades

Answers to your specific questions:
1. Yes. And there's an automated script to do that, accessed by loading up the 1.5 zc_install folder and running zc_install/index.php from your browser, and choosing Database Upgrade. This is explained in the upgrade documents mentioned above.

2. Zen Cart v1.3.9 and v1.5.0+ are compatible with PHP 5.3 already.

3. You won't use the "old" code at all. So, since you indicated that your server has already been upgraded, you can basically do all your work directly on that server.
If you're concerned about customers seeing it while you're working on updating, go into your Admin and turn on the Down For Maintenance feature (Admin->Configuration->Website Maintenance ... the first option there is used to turn this on or off)

If you really need to work on your store in an offline way, set up a webserver on your PC using XAMPP or WAMP and use that to be your "test" webserver. Their websites give you information on how to use their packages to run your own webserver on your PC and add a website to it. There are also some forum/FAQ articles around here which talk about the concepts briefly insomuch as the Zen Cart aspect is concerned.

[creekside]

Thank you Dr.Byte for the direction. I was reading in other areas of the forum where they described being sure to upgrade the database from 1.3.8a to 1.3.9 before trying to upgrade it to 1.5.0. Is this something that I need to do and if so do I have to install 1.3.9 upgrade there then go to 1.5 and upgrade again?

Also since I am starting with 1.3.8a which is not compatible with PHP 5.1 is there a process that gets me through this issue and into the light of 1.5.0?

[DrByte]

I was reading in other areas of the forum where they described being sure to upgrade the database from 1.3.8a to 1.3.9 before trying to upgrade it to 1.5.0.

I don't know where people get that idea from. The database upgrade step is straightforward and automated. It's the easiest part of an upgrade.
It's the merging and rebuilding of PHP files that's more complicated. But even then, since your old site is 1.3.8a, then if you compare your site's files against a fresh set of original 1.3.8a files, you'll see all the things that you changed. Then it's a simple matter making those kinds of changes again in 1.5.0.
And if your changes are related to addons, then if there's an updated version of the addon available, that simplifies things even more. Then wash, rinse, repeat as necessary.

[DivaVocals]

I don't know where people get that idea from. The database upgrade step is straightforward and automated. It's the easiest part of an upgrade.

Nods in agreement

All of my client upgrades have been 1.3.8 to 1.5.. the database upgrades have been the EASIEST part of the whole process.. and quite honestly I'm okay rebuilding the whole front-end over if the data is safe and converted.. In one site I built 4 years ago the upgrade was a chance for me to correct some of the methods I used 4 years ago in parts of the site implementation.. (I've learned a LOT from this forum and the good people to hang here, it was nice to apply what I've learned going through these upgrades)

[creekside]

Well, thank you for pointing me in the right direction. I feel though that I am so new at this product I will come up with some really stupid questions over the weekend, but I will endeavor to do good with this upgrade. Is there any place I can find the original 1.3.8a file set so I start from the right place? I have file compare products that I can use locally to find any changes that were made and I might have some questions about where in the menu I can find the proper upgrade selections.

Thanks in advance for your help...

[DrByte]

Downloads: http://sourceforge.net/projects/zencart/files/

Do remember that there are many FAQ articles worth looking at, as well as existing forum discussions. These may help you find answers before someone has a chance to respond to a question you post. But don't be afraid to ask if you need help!

[creekside]

Well I have attempted the database upgrade and started the comparison of the data. The upgrade of the database turned out to be a pain as my hosting ISP prevents me from logging in if there is an admin or zc_install directory in the store area as placed by the zencart installation. Having renamed these folders and changing permissions for the configure.php files I was able to restore my 1.3.8a database to the location of my new installation. When I ran the index.php it told me it didn't think any upgrade was necessary. There was only an upgrade path from 1.3.8 to 1.3.9 which is what I chose and the script ran with errors all of which went like this:
All the add statements failed because there were tables, indecies that already existed and all the del statements that failed failed because the object being deleted didn't exist.
That first run completed then I ran the second one going from 1.39 to 1.5.0 and had more of the same kind of errors which didn't seem fatal in any case.

In the end though when I renamed the directories back to their original names and logged in as the admin to see if my categories and products appeared, they did not.

Is there a reference to the Schema that can be compared to the current database to determine what is not quite right? At this point I am going to look into the tables directly to find names and data that might have been transfered in there to see if there is only generic information to be found...

[DrByte]

In your database there are tables named like this:
- address_book
- customers
- countries
etc

But if your old store had a prefix set up (DB_PREFIX in the configure.php files), they would look like this:
Example: DB_PREFIX set as 'zen_'
- zen_address_book
- zen_customers
- zen_countries

So, if your new install of Zen Cart has a different DB_PREFIX than what you were importing from, then you will not see the data from the imported tables.

[creekside]

Well it turns out that my ISP's interface for updating the databases was the culprit. I was able with their help to get the database over into the new 1.5.0 ZenCart, YEAH! Since then I have upgraded the database and finished the process of updating each picture and moving it onto the new cart. Now when I go into the admin area I can see all the related pictures. Next I started working on the details of the /includes/languages/english/html_includes/ php files. I was able to get for example define_main_page.php updated by editing both of them and correcting in the new main page file any information that was in the old but not updated. When I went to the site I thought I'd see something close to what appeared before but what it looks like is a combination of the default ZenCart software and my updates.

Looking closer I find that the previous cart might have been created with "Apple Zen" as there are directories all over the place starting with that. What the old site had was a pointer that changed where to look for defaults and where they must have done their work. Do you have any idea where I could find global area variables that might have pointed the software away from the default location for files? The reason I asked for example the words "TagLine Here" appear on the home page which is found in the languages/english/header.php and has not been changed in the old site but the old site's appearance was vastly different than it currently is so the defaults must have been pointed to in a different area. Where can I change the location of those?