Migration to another host

[nehoward64]

I am looking into the logistics of migrating to a more reliable domain and adding ssl to my site. I have a 'pretty good' idea of some of the logistics involved, but, can someone drop in on the detailed intricacies of nameserver/hosting changes needed in zencart as well as adding ssl to an existing site?
Any information would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

[yd29999]

First, back up EVERYTHING on your hard drive. Including images,data base etc.

If you go with a good hosting company, they will talk you thru it and have most of it done in no time.

Listen to what they say and take notes (even mental ones) so everything gets done.

[nehoward64]

Yeah, what I was actually looking for and not finding in the zencart book is the internal settings that would need to be changed in the php files for migration and adding SSL. Backing up to the hard drive and ftp-ing to the new server is the easy part...

[yd29999]

Like I said, they will talk you thru it. It will be your configure files and if I remember correctly, the htaccess file. The main thing is to be able to actually talk to a tech. I had a minor issue when I moved mine last year. He forgot to add the ssl to I believe the htaccess and my images wouldn't show up on the htts pages.

But honestly, it is very easy with a good hosting company. I couldn't believe I waited so long.

[Merlinpa1969]

take a look at the certified hosts,
must will move it for you

[nehoward64]

and what about the addition of ssl to an exting site setup without one? I'm not seeing this in the book anywhere and i'm sure there are some files to edit and such.

[Merlinpa1969]

you would need to modify the
includes/configure.php and the (admin)/includes/configure.php

you need to set the https url and set the use https switch to true

save and upload

[g1smd]

Make sure you also have a copy of the DATABASE. Your site is nothing without that.

Are you moving host and changing to a new domain name, or are you going to use the same domain name with the new host?

There's several steps in this process and it is important to do them in the right order.

[nehoward64]

moving to a new host and keeping the established domain name.

[ALiepinieks]

i haven't ever found any problems with migrations other than...

1) security on folders, which is easily reapplied
2) paths stored in the zen-cart database - of which i've only ever seen two, both of which relate to the location of the cache directory. once again, these are easily changed via phpmyadmin
3) add-on modules specifying path information explicitly rather than using already supplied definitions in configure.php

the 2 x configure.php files are very quickly edited, and i recently went through a migration from a non-ssl host to one with ssl. only problem i had was the domain ssl was purchased for (in this case it was purchased for domain.com rather than www.domain.com, hence i had to edit my configure.php files accordingly and now all ssl pages appear as http://domain.com/ in the browser).

hope this helps