upgraded with InMotion from v139 -product descriptions will not show after preview

[david53]

site url http://baronet4tibet.com/zencart/ using version V1.5.6a just upgraded from V1.3.9. upgraded php language to 5.5 and database to be compatible.

when I change the products Description in the text box it shows in the preview, however when I update the product the description is not there. The editing page fully populates from the database, but upon updating the preview the description disappears.

when I go back to enter it again the text box is now empty. When I first edit a product the text box is full with the description from the data base. It is also in the preview screen, but disappears when I view the live listing and again when I go back to fix it the text box is empty.

http://baronet4tibet.com/zencart/ind...products_id=92 [product that has not been edited]
http://baronet4tibet.com/zencart/ind...products_id=56 [product that has been edited and the description is now missing]

I updated using the update software on InMotion hosting. Everything else appears to be working fine, sales are completing, order confirmations are still sequential, etc.

[DrByte]

Unfortunately those "auto update" tools provided by hosting companies aren't always reliable.

If your preview page is blank because of PHP error, then you'll see those errors recorded in new files in your /logs/ directory as myDebug-adm-xxxxxxx.log where xxxxxx is increasing numbers. A new file is created on every page click where an error occurs, so you'll want to sort out all of those.
You might have old code in your site that's not compatible with the new PHP version you switched to, and that'll be creating error logs.

If the problem is because your old data was using latin1 or iso-8859-1 to store data and the new version (since 1.5.0) uses utf-8, then anytime certain special encoded characters exist in the page it may not render the output properly or at all. Related FAQ article to help: https://www.zen-cart.com/content.php...8859-1-to-utf8

A best-practice for upgrading is to set up a temporary copy of your site as a "staging area" to work out any of these kinds of glitches before you "go live" by applying the update to your live site. http://www.zen-cart.com/entry.php?3

[lat9]

Additional questions, building on DrByte's comments:

Since Zen Cart 1.3.x didn't support use of a DB_CHARSET constant, that setting (as well as your database's collations) are, in my mind, the suspects.

1. Within your /admin/includes/configure.php, is there a definition for DB_CHARSET and, if so, what is the value set?
2. When you view your admin's /includes/languages/english.php, what value is set for the CHARSET definition?
3. When you review your database using phpMyAdmin, when the right-side panel contains a listing of all tables in the database, what value(s) show in the Collation column?
4. Are there any debug-logs generated when you try to save that product definition? Look for files like /logs/myDEBUG-adm-*.log on or around the time that you tried. If any are generated, please post the contents as DrByte indicated in the previous post, remembering that the contents of those logs will include the name of your admin directory (so you need to xxx-out that/those values).

[david53]

Additional questions, building on DrByte's comments:

Since Zen Cart 1.3.x didn't support use of a DB_CHARSET constant, that setting (as well as your database's collations) are, in my mind, the suspects.

1. Within your /admin/includes/configure.php, is there a definition for DB_CHARSET and, if so, what is the value set?
2. When you view your admin's /includes/languages/english.php, what value is set for the CHARSET definition?
3. When you review your database using phpMyAdmin, when the right-side panel contains a listing of all tables in the database, what value(s) show in the Collation column?
4. Are there any debug-logs generated when you try to save that product definition? Look for files like /logs/myDEBUG-adm-*.log on or around the time that you tried. If any are generated, please post the contents as DrByte indicated in the previous post, remembering that the contents of those logs will include the name of your admin directory (so you need to xxx-out that/those values).

tDB_CHARSET and CHARSET ARE utf8
IN THE phpMyAdmin database the collation is either utf8mb4_general_ci or latin1_swedish_ci [mostly the latter]

zen_products_description is set to latin1_swedish_ci

The only logs generated close to the time are in cache have a " PHP Warning: date(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set"

[lat9]

tDB_CHARSET and CHARSET ARE utf8
IN THE phpMyAdmin database the collation is either utf8mb4_general_ci or latin1_swedish_ci [mostly the latter]

zen_products_description is set to latin1_swedish_ci

The only logs generated close to the time are in cache have a " PHP Warning: date(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set"

That's the source of your issue; you need to convert your database to use all utf8mb4_general_ci collations. You can do this using the Convert db2utf8 plugin, modifying the convert_db2utf8.php module's $desiredCollation value to utf8mb4_general_ci:

/**
 * convert_db2utf8
 *
 * @package eCommerce-Service
 * @copyright Copyright 2004-2007, Andrew Berezin eCommerce-Service.com
 * @license http://www.zen-cart.com/license/2_0.txt GNU Public License V2.0
 * @version $Id: convert_db2utf8.php, v 2.0.1 16.10.2007 14:47 Andrew Berezin $
 *
 * Updated 2014-06-28 to change mysql_ functions to mysqli_ functions, for compatibility with PHP >= 5.4
 * Updated 2015-01-11 (lat9).  Check for, and convert, overall database collation, too!
 * Updated 2018-01-01 (mc12345678).  Support both quoted and unquoted databases when converting the overall database collation.
 *
 */
error_reporting(E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE);
$desiredCollation = 'utf8mb4_general_ci'; // could optionally use utf8_unicode_ci

Put your site into maintenance mode prior to the conversion and make sure that you have a backup of the database, made just prior to the conversion.

For that logged error, you need to edit your store's /includes/extra_configures/set_time_zone.php to reflect your store's time-zone:

<?php
/**
 * @package initSystem
 * @copyright Copyright 2003-2018 Zen Cart Development Team
 * @license http://www.zen-cart.com/license/2_0.txt GNU Public License V2.0
 * @version $Id: Drbyte Tue Sep 11 15:54:43 2018 -0400 Modified in v1.5.6 $
 */
/*
 * Set time zone
*/
  // put your timezone here. Refer to http://www.php.net/manual/en/timezones.php
  $TZ = '';  // eg: 'Europe/Oslo'



  /**
   * MAKE NO CHANGES BELOW THIS LINE
   *
   * The following will take the timezone you specified above and apply it in your store.
   * If you didn't specify one, it will try to use the setting from your server's PHP configuration
   */
  if ($TZ == '') {
    $TZ = date_default_timezone_get();
  }
  if ($TZ != '') {
    putenv('TZ=' . $TZ);
    @date_default_timezone_set($TZ);
  }

[david53]

I can go into the MySQL database and go to the zen_products_description and enter html code into the database and add the description, but would rather do it in zen cart.

[lat9]

I can go into the MySQL database and go to the zen_products_description and enter html code into the database and add the description, but would rather do it in zen cart.

Smart move! I believe that running that plugin to change the collations of all tables to reflect the character-type your configure.php files are indicating will correct the issues you're having.

[david53]

fixed it, I decided to go with "latin1" in the includes/configure.php and it is working fine, thanks very much