Plugins and database upgrade confusion

[RoPey]

Hi there
I've trawled through the posts in this forum and have as yet been unable to answer my question so please forgive if I'm covering old ground.

I'm upgrading a 1.3.7.1 shop to 1.5.1. I have done my compares between a clean 1.3.7.1 and my current shop site and noted all the changes and am now going through making the changes to the 1.5.1 files to incorporate my own changes. However, apart from my template and a couple of customisations, most of the changes to files or files without peers in the vanilla install are those added in by the plugins I originally installed.

A number of these plugins specifically say or imply that they should not be installed until the shop is active. Where this is the case, if a plugin has made changes to the database what should I do about the step where I install the shop and upgrade the database, will the lack of the files relating to the plugin fields in the database cause the install to fail because the entries in the database have nothing to marry up to?

I should add that I am doing this on a local development server before ever touching the live shop. I'm just unsure as to the process, should all the original plugin files be up there before upgrading the database?

Thanks in advance.

[schoolboy]

The challenge is really determining if a plugin is compatible with 1.5 .

Some are... many aren't.

Your first step then, is to see which of your existing plugins in your 1.3.7 setup are themselves upgraded to meet the requirements of zc 1.5

Those that are incompatible might need to be removed (from your local dev, of course) and if any of these have modified core files, then those modifications themselves also need to be removed.

Now... some mods may be quite OK - even though they were developed for older versions. There is a thread on the forum where mod developers were encouraged to indicate compatibility. I think swguy started it.

I had a similar conundrum... I advised the client to basically re-consider the number of plugins being used, and we pared these down to a bare minimum.

I cleaned out the database where necessary (either by running a mod's uninstall sql, or by manually taking out stuff via phpMyAdmin), and then cleaned out the files.

This is a good opportunity to do a major housekeeping.

Bear in mind that the world is going "mobile" so it may be a good idea to look at a brand new "responsive" template...

[RoPey]

Thanks for the reply schoolboy - there aren't many plugins (7) and all are used. I have checked that the plugins have new versions that are OK with 1.5.1 and downloaded the new versions ready to install. However, there is my conundrum, for instance the Ceon SagePay Form requires the shop to be active when it is installed. Are you saying that I have to strip all the plugin stuff out of the database before upgrading? What then happens to the data that is in the database?

I'm very aware of the need for responsive templates, all my website customers are now being encouraged to consider this. Although, right at the moment I want to concentrate on getting the shop working in the newest version.

Thanks again for your time...

[schoolboy]

OK so you can't remove the sagepay mod. I do not think it will be affected by an upgrade to 1.5 . (I have SagePay Form on several 1.3.9 sites, and one or two 1.5 sites).

But if you have ImageHandler ver 2 or 3, then it won't work with zc 1.5 . This one has to come out.

Here's a thought...

Why not upgrade to 1.3.9h for starters (still very stable)... It's not as radical as going from 1.3.7 to 1.5

Then seek better advice than I am able to give on some of the "mission-critical" modules.

[RoPey]

I am currently running ImageHandler - can't remember offhand whether it's 2 or 3, but there is a new version for 1.5 so I was going to upgrade that along with the whole upgrade. Can that not be done? This is another plugin that says that it has to be installed when the shop is active.

[schoolboy]

I don't think you can "upgrade" IH... but check the support thread.

When I took a 1.3.9 site to 1.5 with IH, I removed IH 3 completely.

Then I did a totally fresh install of IH 4

[DivaVocals]

I don't think you can "upgrade" IH... but check the support thread.

When I took a 1.3.9 site to 1.5 with IH, I removed IH 3 completely.

Then I did a totally fresh install of IH 4

Just wanted to add this is probably the cleanest way.. IH4 does SOME cleanup of old IH configuration table entries during the auto-install, but does not remove deleted/deprecated files.. another option is that the OP can run the IH uninstaller from the shop admin BEFORE doing his upgrade to remove the configuration table entries.. (he will still have to manually remove deleted/deprecated files)