upgrade vs clean install

The only thing I have time invested in in my ver 1.3.0.2
is my catagories and products. (product pictures, description, etc.

No big page customiztion, was really just getting going. I have some payment module errors I cant resolve.

If I want to just upgrade can i preserve all my products work? If yes, where are the directions on how to do this.

I can't seem to find.

thank you.

kdgjevre:

The only thing I have time invested in in my ver 1.3.0.2
is my catagories and products. (product pictures, description, etc.

No big page customiztion, was really just getting going. I have some payment module errors I cant resolve.

If I want to just upgrade can i preserve all my products work? If yes, where are the directions on how to do this.

I can't seem to find.

thank you.

To do this I would use Easy populate to extract all your cats and prods , create a new 1.3.7 store install easy populate and import them in , then do any page customisation in the overides sections , takes about 20 mins !

HOWEVER you will be suprised how many little setting you forgot you had changed in the DB so the prefered method is make a backup of your DB and files , and get the store working in a new folder , then dump over the updated files , run ZC_install and update the DB , check it all works , and move it back to your live folder. ( changing the various paths in configure.php)

Do the backup and restore again once you are happy with the changes to reflect new data.

Is this a backup and restore of my database on the host? Or is there a backup and restore function in ZenCart. I can't find any documentation.

Have you looked in your /docs directory?

If you can install 1.3.7 in a separate directory with its own db, you can fiddle with the template and then backup the entire thing before uploading it to the live site. If you do that, you can run zc_install to upgrade the db only which will preserve your data. Of course, you should back up the live site (ZC files and db) before doing this, but it can be done.

Thank you afo you have been helpful.

kdgjevre:

Thank you afo you have been helpful.

I know some of what I said may sound like gibberish, but it's basically what I did to upgrade a ZC site from 1.2.7 to 1.3.7. I created a separate space to install 1.3.7 with its own database (which I filled from the live database for testing purposes). I then worked on getting the look of the site the way I wanted it. Since the live site was functioning well, I figured I could address issues like payment and shipping after the upgrade. Once I was done with the template, I downloaded the entire thing to my harddrive (where I had most of it anyway) and took the live shop down for maintenance. I uploaded the 1.3.7 files INCLUDING zc_install to the live shop. I edited the config files to match the old config files from the shop so they would be pointing to the right place (not the test site). I then ran zc_install to update the DB only. The result is the shop in my sig.

No your help is not gibberish....i have one last clarifying question. I have decided that there is nothing but products in my store that i want to preserve. So I'm going to do a new install.

the directions that i am looking for...."and no these directions are not in the DOCS" I have looked is.....

can i back up my data base I NEED THE SPECIFIC INSTRUCTION......DROP TABLES, DON'T DROP TABLES, WHAT COMPRESSION ALL THE RIGHT SETTINGS. then one new install is going can i restore the data base.

this is what i want to do, CAN IT BE DONE? i don't care about templates or payment moduels, my time has all been put into products.

thank you thank you thank you.

Here's what I did when I set up the test environment for 1.3.7 (stay with me, I am going to answer your question, although I'm going over old ground as well)

I went into my webmaster panel (NOT ZC admin, but the webmaster panel for your domain) and used phpMyAdmin to backup the data. If you have multiple mySql databases, select the one you want from the dropdown menu. At the top of the screen there should be an option (a tab or something like it) for EXPORT. When you select that, there should be a series of options for the export format. Select SQL and save it as a file. Compression is up to you. The IMPORT function should recognize it when it uploads the data, BUT you shouldn't need to do that if everything goes well. If you only run zc_install for the db upgrade ONLY, the backup will be your safety net.

Once I set up the (empty) db and installed 1.3.7 (from the files I unzipped on my local drive), I used the IMPORT option from CPanel (the webmaster panel my host uses) to populate the db. Once the site looked the way I wanted, I took the live site down for maintenance, uploaded the files from my local drive (where I'd made all my changes before uploading them to the testbed) to the live site INCLUDING zc_install. I updated the config files to match the live site's config files (you might want to save a copy of them locally, so you have all the info handy) and ran zc_install to upgrade the db only. The db upgrade ran perfectly and I didn't lose any data.

If you chose to upgrade the live site directly, when zc_install is done, you'll have to use IMPORT to repopulate your db.

Does that help?

Absolutely helps, thank you. I was confused due to some posts that talked about eventually getting data base errors because they did not choose the PHP back up choice of "drop tables". Other documentation didn't mention the need to do this.

Thanks for hanging with ME!

Kendall

I probably got errors when I copied the live db to the test one, but since it was a test one, I didn't really care/notice. If you do get errors about a table not being in the new db (unlikely), it's probably because you don't need it anymore... I think.

All I know for sure is that once I set up the template away from the live store and uploaded 1.3.7 with my custom files in place, I could run the zc_install to just upgrade the db and I didn't need the backup for anything after that. The store is up and running just fine. I need to work on some (ok... all) of the product images, but that has nothing to do with the upgrade.

If I haven't mentioned it already, the site I'm talking about is in my sig.