Confused new zenner needs help upgrading from 1.3.5 to 1.3.6

[MicrophonePro]

What follows is a total noob question that I spent hours trying to find an answer for but finally the simple answer occured to me. I thought my findings may help ease the brain stress of other new zenners. Plus, I'm still a little nervous I'm not quite updating correctly and may need further help.

Hello,

First a big thanks to all of those that have provided me with tons of valuable info specifically, Dr. Byte, Ajeh, and Misty. I'm sure there are many others involved in making Zen Cart the cool thing that it is but, I've only been zenning for ten days and still very new to this community and web design in general. I love it and can't wait to go live!! As soon as I sell my first product, coffee is on me.

Back on topic,
I've installed 1.3.5 and it's been working well. Since I'm still not live with any store, I thought it would be a good time to try upgrading and so I've been trying to upgrade to 1.3.6
I've been following the 3 EASY STEPS TO UPGRADE ZEN CART™ tutorial but I'm still confused as to how I go live.

The tutorial states, "To go live, put your shop into "Down for Maintenance" mode in the admin area. Be sure to add your IP address to the list of allowed addresses to get into the site for previewing.
This can be done easiest by renaming "store_new" to "store". (You'll have to rename "store" to something else first.)
Test it to be sure that things are operating as desired. If you have small problems to repair, turn "Down for maintenance" on and off again as necessary."

I put my shop in Down for Maintenance mode and then tried renaming my /store_new/ to /store/ and my webpage turns into a very simple text file with a few links and no photo's.

So, now I've finally figured out that there is actually another step following the renaming of /store_new/ to /store/ where you have to once again change the /admin/includes/configure.php and /includes/configure.php files so that they point to the re-named directory.

[MicrophonePro]

What's next? After I've successfully installed a new version, can or should I delete the old directory and database?

[MicrophonePro]

Uh Oh, I don't think I found the right way to go live. My images were showing for a while but I think they were just held in cache. They've slowly disappeared after several refreshes. Do I need to copy all the images over or does this tell something about where my upgrade went wrong?

Thanks,
Jamey

[Sketchy]

Your product images or ?? If so, you'd have to copy the main "images" folder from your older version and upload it into your current version.

Do you have a URL to have a peek at?

[MicrophonePro]

Thanks for checking in Sketchy.

Yes, the product images were the ones not showing. I did copy my images folder to the upgraded site and everything shows up now. I just didn't see this step in the tutorial so I was a bit confused. It seems like an obvious change but to a beginner, these things are easily overlooked.

[Sketchy]

You're welcome.

Agreed, upgrading can be an anxious and stressful time... confusion and lack of repetitive experience can make a person bonkers. I think that you did an outstanding job with upgrading, if I do say so myself.

[MicrophonePro]

Thanks,

It seems that I was a bit confused about how this upgrade actually happens. Now it occurs to me that it's more like re-building the site on the new version with a recent copy of the working database and then switching to the new site. I was thinking that to upgrade, I would have to run the zc_install folder on my old site somehow. Since I had deleted it, I was a little concerned. Now that I know how to build up a new site and change it over easily, I think I'll be doing it more often.

Cheers,
Jamey

[Sketchy]

You're welcome Jamey.

I still have to upgrade mine, so wish me luck. I guess I don't really need to, as my store front isn't live... but, I'd like to learn how anyways. Then, I can provide better help. I think it's like having your old store as a backup in the end, then it's still online(although, not live) and you can upgrade that one with the next version(after freshing up the old database with the current one). It would be like switching back and forth. I guess it would still require re-loading mods and so forth. Whatever, I'll learn all about it soon. If I get stuck, you can give me a pointer or two.

[MicrophonePro]

Well good luck! And of course if I can help, I will.