Question about upgrading

[waterbender]

Hi DrByte

Getting a bit confused... Am I right that there are two ways of upgrading?
A. Rebuild everything in a separate folder new_shop. When everything is satisfied, upgrade live site directly based on the changes recorded from the new_shop. This is from this article http://www.zen-cart.com/entry.php?3-...d-of-upgrading
B. Rebuild everything in a separate folder new_shop. When everything is satisfied, move live site to a separate folder old_shop and change new_shop to live site. This is from this article http://www.zen-cart.com/content.php?148

I am more comfortable with the second method. It might be more tedious but it seems safer and cleaner. So my next questions is that after I drop the tables in the new database and reload the live database a second time, do I simply re-run the install.sql files of 3rd party modules since the files are still in new_shop. Is there anything else to redo or reinstall?

[DrByte]

So my next questions is that after I drop the tables in the new database and reload the live database a second time, do I simply re-run the install.sql files of 3rd party modules since the files are still in new_shop. Is there anything else to redo or reinstall?

While I can't comment specifically on every change you've made to your site, yes that's the concept. Simply run whatever setup/install process is relevant to the modules/plugins/addons/whatever you've added/changed/upgraded. zc_install takes care of the main core data and structure. And *you* take care of whatever additional components you've decided to integrate on top of it.