Ypgrading: Simple Questions, because I'm stuuuupid

I have a couple questions that might be simple but for the life of me I cant understand.

1. When you say to create a Temp directory for creating your site, do you just make a folder on your desktop/harddrive/etc and build the site in there using all the www info?
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2. I found an 'Add-on' that says to change the name of the 'Catalog' folder to the unique catalog folder name, however I dont see a 'Catalog' folder in 1.5.4. Where is this?
3. When transfering from your test site to you Live site via FTP, do you just select all the folders inside that Test site and upload them?

I know these are simple questions, and maybe it's the lack of sleep thanks to the twins, but I can not for the life of me figure this out.

Good list of things to do is available here.
How do I rebuild my site on the new version, instead of upgrading? - Blogs - Zen Cart Support

[*]When you say to create a Temp directory for creating your site, do you just make a folder on your desktop/harddrive/etc and build the site in there using all the www info?

The idea here is that if you'd like to deploy it to your website but aren't quite ready to go live, just put it in a subfolder. If your site is currently in a subfolder (say, "shop"), put it in a different folder a the same level ("new-shop"). If your site is NOT in a folder, put the new shop in a folder at the same level as includes, and just remember to go there, rather than one level up, when testing.

'[*]I found an 'Add-on' that says to change the name of the 'Catalog' folder to the unique catalog folder name, however I dont see a 'Catalog' folder in 1.5.4. Where is this?

This is a remnant from osCommerce, which used to store the entire cart in a folder called catalog. It's just the folder that contains all the directories, like includes, admin, etc. There is no need to change this or even worry about it if it doesn't exist.

[*]When transferring from your test site to you Live site via FTP, do you just select all the folders inside that Test site and upload them?

Correct. Alternately, you can build a zip file out of your test site, upload that, and unzip it in Cpanel file manager.
Just remember you will need to update includes/configure.php and admin/includes/configure.php after deployment.

The most important thing is that one must NOT perform upgrades on a live webshop - so the first thing to do is create an identical COPY of it.

It does not really matter where this "copy" is located - another directory is fine - we usually copy it to a "spare domain" on our server, so it is well away from the original, but still operating on the same server (server configuration is important).

The point is that one works on upgrading the COPY - not the original - and then when you're happy that the upgrade on the COPY is successful, you then apply the same PROCEDURES to the ORIGINAL site.

When I did my first upgrade, I did not rush things, and used the opportunity to learn how to do it, and what everything meant. I followed the advice and tutorials on this forum, and made very few errors.

Because you are working on a COPY of the site, it does not matter if you make mistakes.

Take LOTS of detailed notes as you proceed... Write down everything you do, when it was done... etc...

Preface: this was originated yesterday, has some duplication to existing answers, but would like to offer in support of further clarification.

While the above questions may have actually originated from those instructions, I would think that the same questions would still likely apply or at least that's the approach I'm taking here. :P

1. The temp directory technically is any directory that is not specifically where your store is setup. It allows you to edit files there without affecting your live site. Ideally this temp directory would be somewhere that you could host the files to see the results of changes you make so that again, not affect your live site/store. If that location is your personal computer, great, it could also be a subfolder off of your site, or another domain, or a subdomain, etc.... But basically the files copied over to the "temp" directory are not to overwrite files of your live site. "Security" of the files is another aspect of concern.

2. Keep in mind addons or plugins/additional code, are provided by other volunteers trying to do the best they can to provide some amount of software/changes to help others out. Sometimes that means figuring out exactly what is going on and what is needed to make things work. Ideally, the issue if any is addressed already or by your noticing an issue in the forum associated with the plugin. In this regards, the original author may have had their ZC installed in a subdirectory of their site. Thus they may have called it catalog, and further passed that on to others. More important in that particular situation is to copy the contents of the catalog directory to where visitors are directed related to your ZC site. So if all of your ZC files are in the public_html folder, that folder is your catalog folder.

3. This can be relatively dependent on the condition of your site and the amount of changes made. Just the changed items could be uploaded, or the entire site. Be mindful though that if files exist on the live site that are/were to be removed then a separate action is required which is where those notes mentioned above come in handy. :)

Also a word of encouragement to the OP: you're not stupid; no one was born knowing all this stuff. The stupid people are the ones who are making excuses to avoid doing what you're doing.