Recovering from a MySQL upgrade: possible?

[FalsePerc]

Hey all,
About a year ago, I set up a zencart online store. Everything worked fine for about 5 months, until my webhost, webmasters.com, upgraded their MySQL server without notice. Suddenly, all listed products, though still linked to, retruned this error when accessed:

1054 Unknown column 'p.products_id' in 'on clause'

I tried everything in my power to fix the issue, but soon gave up. My company decided to sell locally, and worry about zencart later. Well, now it';s later, and we;d like to get into the world of ecommerce. The error is, of coruse, still there and still unfixable, so I deicded to install another copy of zencart, but it's been a hellishly painful week trying to get it to work, and it's still thoroughhly unsatisfying. Not to mention the 400+ products thata re on the old site which will have to be relisted at the expense ofconsiderable time and effort. In other words, I'd very much like to get the old store back up and running. If ANYONE here can help me in that respect, will be extremely grateful. And, if you're into fish tanks, I'm sure we could work out a deal. I have moderate php skills and no MySQL skills whatsoever.

Thanks in advance,
Mike

[kobra]

If you still have access to the account and the DB or a backup this can be restored and you will not lose the product entries that you have

[FalsePerc]

Kobra - could you tell me how I'd go about doing that?

Thanks!

Mike

[kobra]

The Recommended Basic Method: Replace Live DB with Old DB

There are examples on how to make a new directory such as /new_shop and create a new database ...

Then backup the Live Database ...
note: you will do this a couple times during the upgrade processes

Load the backup of the Live Database to your new database for the /new_shop

Load the new version of Zen Cart to /new_shop

Copy your existing:
/includes/configure.php
/admin/includes/configure.php

to the
/new_shop/includes/configure.php
/new_shop/admin/includes/configure.php

Edit the 2 files and change the paths and database information to reflect the new path for /new_shop and the new database name, username and password

Run the /new_shop/zc_install and UPGRADE the database

Copy the files in:
/new_shop/includes/templates/classic

To your new template directory:
/new_shop/includes/templates/your_template_dir

Edit the file:
/new_shop/includes/templates/your_template_dir/temp_info.php

and enter your template name ...

Copy the files in:
/includes/languages/english/html_includes/classic

to your templates directory:
/includes/languages/english/html_includes/your_template_dir

NOTE: be sure to change permissions to 777 if you wish to edit these from the Admin ...

To build your templates and overrides with the new v1.3.x method, start with the language files you already customized and upgrade them to include all of the new defines in v1.3.6

Beyond Compare from scootersoftware.com is a great tool for making these kind of changes and comparing original files with old files to bring them up to date ...

There are numerous posts on this in the forum and the FAQs and Wiki to help you along ...

Keep track of changes to the configuration settings that you make ...

Later, when you have everything perfect, you will be setting your Live Shop to Down for Maintenance and doing a backup again of the Live Shop database, empting the tables in the /new_shop database and loading the most recent backup from the Live Site and re-running the /new_shop/zc_install and Upgrading the current data again ...

Then you need to move your Live Shop to /old_shop and /new_shop to your Live Shop location ...

NOTE: be sure to update the 2 configure.php files with the Live Shop path but do NOT change the database information ... the New Live Shop will use the New database ...

Read this a few times slowly and you will start to see the pattern to this ...

This method allows you to upgrade your site slowly and carefully without taking down your Live shop until the last possible moment and for the briefest amount of time ...
##############################___
Linda McGrath

[FalsePerc]

I just checked to see, and the backup I do have of my database is incompatible wqith the new version of MySQL on the server: it loads fine, but gives me the same error once loaded. The issue is more that zencart is using databses in a way that simply doesnt work on the new version of MySQL. (That's the reason that it stopped working: when webmasters.com updated MySQL, not when I made any changes to my shop or databases) I am willing to lose my listed products, but I would like to try and recover the ability to display them on the site. Here is a link:

http://www.findamentals.com/zencart

Thanks,
Mike