Migration to another host

I am looking into the logistics of migrating to a more reliable domain and adding ssl to my site. I have a 'pretty good' idea of some of the logistics involved, but, can someone drop in on the detailed intricacies of nameserver/hosting changes needed in zencart as well as adding ssl to an existing site?
Any information would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

First, back up EVERYTHING on your hard drive. Including images,data base etc.

If you go with a good hosting company, they will talk you thru it and have most of it done in no time.

Listen to what they say and take notes (even mental ones) so everything gets done.

Yeah, what I was actually looking for and not finding in the zencart book is the internal settings that would need to be changed in the php files for migration and adding SSL. Backing up to the hard drive and ftp-ing to the new server is the easy part:wacko:...

Like I said, they will talk you thru it. It will be your configure files and if I remember correctly, the htaccess file. The main thing is to be able to actually talk to a tech. I had a minor issue when I moved mine last year. He forgot to add the ssl to I believe the htaccess and my images wouldn't show up on the htts pages.

But honestly, it is very easy with a good hosting company. I couldn't believe I waited so long.

take a look at the certified hosts,
must will move it for you

and what about the addition of ssl to an exting site setup without one? I'm not seeing this in the book anywhere and i'm sure there are some files to edit and such.

you would need to modify the
includes/configure.php and the (admin)/includes/configure.php

you need to set the https url and set the use https switch to true

save and upload

Make sure you also have a copy of the DATABASE. Your site is nothing without that.

Are you moving host and changing to a new domain name, or are you going to use the same domain name with the new host?

There's several steps in this process and it is important to do them in the right order.

moving to a new host and keeping the established domain name.

i haven't ever found any problems with migrations other than...

1. security on folders, which is easily reapplied
2. paths stored in the zen-cart database - of which i've only ever seen two, both of which relate to the location of the cache directory. once again, these are easily changed via phpmyadmin
3. add-on modules specifying path information explicitly rather than using already supplied definitions in configure.php

the 2 x configure.php files are very quickly edited, and i recently went through a migration from a non-ssl host to one with ssl. only problem i had was the domain ssl was purchased for (in this case it was purchased for domain.com rather than https://www.domain.com, hence i had to edit my configure.php files accordingly and now all ssl pages appear as http://domain.com/ in the browser).

hope this helps

A day or two before you move host, add a note to the top of every page of the old site to say you are shortly moving to new hosting and that the store will be closed for a very short time on the day. Change the DNS TTL setting down to 30 minutes or less as well.

You'll first need to set up the site scripting on the new server, and then just before you copy the database over from old to new site, you will need to stop anyone from signing up, logging in, or buying anything from the old site by taking it 'down for maintenance'.

As soon as that's in place, take a copy of the database and get it installed on the new site. Verify it is all working (reset cache and session data etc) and then change the DNS settings to point to the new site. Within hours, you'll see some visitors appearing on the new server.

Leave the old site online, but inactive, for at least a week to ensure that no-one is arriving there any more. Finally take the old site down and keep copies of the server logs and any other data you need.

Most people will see the site working but showing a note to say it will be 'offline for a while', followed by the store being temporarily 'down for maintenance', followed by the store simply working again (and without the note) when their local DNS has been updated to point to the new server.

It actually doesn't sound too bad, I'm thinking if I take Filezilla and do a 'file for file' 'directory for directory' copy to my hard drive and then load it to the new site the directory structure will remain intact. Adding the ssl seems fairly straightforward. Wish me luck! lol

And thanks for the input. :yes: