Future upgrades

I'm inheriting a highly modified 1.3.9a site from a client who's questioning whether we should continue with Zen-Cart, or move to another system.

I noticed that in the period between May and October of 2010, the cart was upgraded 7 times. I also understand that the upgrade process seems very complicated -- essentially I need to replace all of the cart files and then move my client's modifications over -- probably a day's work.

Please tell me if I understand this incorrectly, or if I need to tell my client that every few weeks she'll have to pay me for a day's work to upgrade her cart.

I apologize if I sound sarcastic (I don't want to be), but it seems as though this process is awfully clunky. But maybe (hopefully) I don't understand it correctly.

Thanks,

John

There was a series of adjustment releases to v1.3.9, but those are done now. There is not expected to be another release until this summer when v1.5.0 is planned for meeting new PA-DSS credit card security requirements - if you are not taking credit cards directly, you may be able to skip that (or maybe not, too soon to know for sure). Aside from that, v1.3.9h is stable and will most likely be supported until v2.0 comes out in the undetermined future.
The first time you do an upgrade, it can be awkward and scary, but it gets significantly quicker and easier with practice.

Thank you for that reply. If my cart is working now, how important is it that I upgrade?

You might want to check this thread: Known Bugs (and fixes) with v1.3.9 as well as the version release threads to decide for yourself.

Upgrading from 1.3.9a to 1.3.9h is just a very simple matter of replacing the files changed in 1.3.9b and 1.3.9c and 1.3.9d, e, f, g, and h by uploading the latest versions of those files to your server.
If you've customized any of those files you'll want to do that again, but the likelihood of such a clash is rare given that most of the updates are to deep core files, not things typically affected by customizations or addons. That said, you must assess your own.
The list of changed files is, as always, inside the /docs/ folder.

Probably a 1-hour process from start to finish, with a total downtime of maybe 2 minutes.