Begging for help - 3 column grid changed to 1 column on FTP

[diannev]

Please please can someone help me. My cart is meant to go live on 1 March and suddenly once I have FTP'd it to the real site I am getting a million problems. I've fixed most but this one I don't know where to start.

My original site has a 3 column grid for Product listing. It's always worked beautifully. On uploading the site, I now have rows.

old site: www.intercommunity.co.za/grandiflora/
new site: www.grandifloradirect.co.za

Its very difficult to keep two sites continually in sync, but except for the config files I believe both sites are identical.

The key difference between the two sites is that mine is on a windows server and real one on Linux.

I re-uploaded modules and templates because I thought that is where the error is likely to be. I've compared the configuration settings on both and they seem identical.

Another strange thing that could perhaps identify a problem - the new page is showing a list at the top for searching?

I would be really grateful if you could look at the two sites and tell me where to start looking for the problem!

[Website Rob]

With the setup you stated, I think you are just asking for trouble.

Did you also download the mySQL database, from the site you want the look of, and upload it to the other site.

Better to put both sites on the same Server with one as the main and one in a Subdirectory (called backup or test); having a test area is always a good idea since you can use the Subdirectory site for further testing.

With that said, your Navigation Menu has problems when FF is used. Have you done a Validation test on the code?
http://validator.w3.org/ or http://htmlhelp.com/


Also, the Events Calendar you are using, is that from a Mod in the Downloads section?

[diannev]

I tried on a previous zen cart to install directly to the server I was using, but because line speed in South Africa was so slow I timed out constantly. I thought I was being clever doing it locally and yes I'm having all kinds of problems with permissions.

I just reset my layout to rows, and then back to columns and now its permanently in rows... things just keep getting worse.

The events calendar is a downloaded mod. It has some issues but mostly it was CSS which I'm fine with.

[diannev]

I am also using Firefox? It seems fine - it doesn't like the ampersands but they are derived from the database categories.

I have asked the host to delete everything, and we are going to start fresh with a normal zc_install. I'm hoping that when I move the files across the permissions will be ok.

I'm just worried about how much more could go wrong next time. I have perhaps 30 modules installed and it took several months to get to this point. I really believed I could use this working version as a template in future.

[diannev]

I fixed the problem.

The 3 column grid "productlisting.php" template isn't stored with the other templates, its in a separate folder. Mine had a capital letter. On a windows server it made no difference but on the Linux server it couldn't find the folder so used an old template under Defaults. I kept reviewing that old template, so nothing I did could solve the problem.

I hope this helps others!

[Website Rob]

Nice bit of troubleshooting and glad to hear you got things sorted.

I'm sure your solution will help others. With Linux being case-sensitive and Windows not, it's a common problem between OS's.

[diannev]

I discovered a very good FTP program called WinSCP (just google it). It is not only amazingly fast, it has a clever function that automatically converts foldernames to lowercase. It may also do it with files, not sure.

I found this one folder manually, but the the software found two others that were probably causing just as much trouble. It also allows setting of file permissions "in bulk".

[diannev]

An addendum - watch out for the spiffy Calendar under Admin - the folder and file names both have intentional capitals.