Debugging after upgrade from 1.3.9 to 1.5.1

Hello all. I've upgraded from 1.3.9 to 1.5.1 following this kind of procedure: http://usmanshahzada.com/blog/how-to-upgrade-zen-cart-1-3-9-to-zen-cart-1-5/

Now I have 1.5.1 in /newzen but I have a lot of work since it used a custom template, custom language, etc. My main problem is that I can't seem to debug the site. There are no debug files created in /logs, tried giving 777 rights to /logs, I tried putting a STRICT_ERROR_REPORTING in configure, but I can't see any logs or errors, although it's clear that site is crashed, it loads only header then the rest is blank. If I only saw errors somewhere, I could take it from there. Any ideas?

I assume you already tried re-uploading the files and other suggestions found at: http://www.zen-cart.com/content.php?124-blank-page. I have found some hosting providers do not allow you to override PHP settings from inside a running script. In this case STRICT_ERROR_REPORTING may not help.

If your hosting provider allows you to customize the php.ini you can change the following:

display_errors = On
display_startup_errors = On
error_reporting = E_ALL

Keep in mind you should never run with these settings on a live (production) website.

Another place you can look is the web server error logs (if your provider gives you access to these) to see if any errors have been reported. In some cases fatal PHP errors will be logged here but not displayed.

You may want to also supply some more information about the hosting provider and maybe a link to the website for others to take a deeper look.

Is this on your live site? Or did you do it on a test copy of your site? What's the URL?

Is there a reason why you didn't follow the upgrade instructions posted on the Zen Cart site, or the instructions included in the Zen Cart files?
www.zen-cart.com/upgrade
http://www.zen-cart.com/entry.php?3-How-do-I-rebuild-my-site-on-the-new-version-instead-of-upgrading

Maybe your configure.php files contain incorrect data, or were edited incorrectly and are triggering PHP errors ... long before any error messages can be output to logs.

Most often when PHP errors are happening immediately following (or during) an upgrade (typically indicated by a blank page), it means that files were missed or outdated files were left behind, or customizations were made incorrectly.
And usually those PHP errors will show up in the myDebug-xxxxxxx.log logs.
If they don't, then most often the problem is in files in the /includes/auto_loaders and/or /includes/init_includes/ and/or /includes/functions folders .... and since that's half of the store, the best advice is really to tell you to re-do your compare of all the files and clean up anything that doesn't match what's supposed to be there.

http://www.zen-cart.com/content.php?124-blank-page
http://www.zen-cart.com/wiki/index.php/Troubleshoot_-_Diagnosing_Obscure_Issues

Ok, thanks for the ideas. I ended up reviewing all my work and it was some stupid couple of files with 600 rights instead of 644. But really...zencart upgrade is a joke, have they seen any modern management system? You click a button and it's done

costelc:

But really...zencart upgrade is a joke, have they seen any modern management system? You click a button and it's done
Thanks for your constructive feedback.

The developers are working on a more modular plugin-style system. Do keep in mind that all those other systems you're talking about are probably not doing ecommerce. A blog is a lot different than dealing with products, shipping, checkout, payment, order management, customers, and so on.