Old zen-cart shop completely broken from old age- possible to salvage the database?

Hello!

I set up a site using zen-cart for my mother's business a long time ago (more than 10 years) and didn't have the time to maintain it. I believe I only updated it once, and that was less than a year into its life.

Needless to say, the site doesn't work at all right now- 500 error page is all you get when you visit the store or the admin side. This is a pretty recent development I believe, probably within the past few months, because my mom has been receiving emails, phone calls, and letters :blink: from customers asking about it recently.

We have a plan to completely revamp the site, probably starting from scratch with the newest zen-cart, but it would be amazing if we could plug the old database into the new one. I imagine I'd have to make some updates to it before it would work. I have access to all of the files through my ftp. Does anyone have any ideas on how to accomplish this? Or will I be better off writing SQL to move data from the old database and insert it into the new one once it's set up?

I have no idea what version of zen-cart I was using. Is it somewhere in a config file?

Thanks for any thoughts or help any of you can provide!

Fortunately the zc_install utility that comes with each version of Zen Cart is capable of taking your existing database and upgrading its content to whatever new structure is required for that new version. It can support as far back as 1.2.5 to bring it up to current.

You can find your Zen Cart version in the /includes/ version.php file of your Zen Cart store.
And in your database there's a project_version table that has 2 records that indicate what version of Zen Cart your database was last upgraded to.

You can find Zen Cart's server-requirements at https://docs.zen-cart.com/user/first_steps/server_requirements/

--
An upgrade is basically a re-build of your store on top of the new version ... and that can be accelerated by using a text-file-compare utility to show you what files you'd customized in your own store.
So, that fits well with what you'd indicated your plans are anyway.
https://docs.zen-cart.com/user/upgrading/detailed_upgrading/
https://docs.zen-cart.com/user/upgrading/