Lady Lionheart Posted March 7, 2015 Share Posted March 7, 2015 Hi everyone, I realise this has been a common problem, but I am a bit short on time since I work very long hours and would like this solved as soon as possible. My webshop runs quite well and makes a good amount of money and I would like it to keep working. As many providers mine is going to be updating php to 5.4 and after that to 5.6. Of course the options are: change provider, upgrade it from 2.2rca2 (where it is now) step by step to the latest version, or a fresh install and import all the data. However since I am very short on time, which one would be the most time efficient and what would be best? Upgrading it step by step takes how long on average? I have installed many contributions and have changed quite a lot myself so I don't want to spend hours and hours fixing this again. I also use plugins for my shipping company (myparcel) and payment methods (multisafepay). I would also like a link between my administration program (acumulus) and oscommerce so I can import all my orders automatically. I appreciate every response, Kind regards,Leonie Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
♥bruyndoncx Posted March 7, 2015 Share Posted March 7, 2015 Leonie, since a few months, there is a commercial forum section where you can ask for paid help. perhaps someone can help you to just get the bare minimum updated to keep your store up and running with 5.4 and buys you some time to migrate to a more up to date oscommerce version ready for php 5.6 KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON I do not use the responsive bootstrap version since i coded my responsive version earlier, but i have bought every 28d of code package to support burts effort and keep this forum alive (albeit more like on life support). So if you are still here ? What are you waiting for ?! Find the most frequent unique errors to fix: grep "PHP" php_error_log.txt | sed "s/^.* PHP/PHP/g" |grep "line" |sort | uniq -c | sort -r > counterrors.txt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrPhil Posted March 7, 2015 Share Posted March 7, 2015 I would suggest installing 2.3.4 (or 2.3.4bs) and importing and upgrading your existing database. That's probably the fastest way, and leaves you in good position for further system upgrades. To change providers just to stay at a back level of PHP is false economy, as eventually they'll have to upgrade. You don't want to stay at an old, unsupported level anyway. There is no real upgrade path from 2.2RC2a to 2.3.4, as you don't want to end up with an impossible to maintain "Frankenstore". Don't forget to install the new store and practice on a "test" directory, so that your operating store isn't accidentally damaged. Also work with a copy of the database, not the live one. When you're happy with the new store, you can quickly cut over to the new one (bring over and upgrade the latest database copy). Don't bother trying to patch the code to support PHP 5.4 -- it will take you longer than moving to 2.3.4, and you can't be certain that it's been done absolutely correctly. The only fly in the ointment will be support for your payment and shipping companies. That may involve some custom programming to bring the modules up to date to work with 2.3.4. Once you have the new basic store working, you can look at tweaking the theme to match your desired appearance, and installing add-ons or doing custom code to replace any missing function from the old store. You won't feel rushed to get it done all at once when your host gives you a deadline. Note that not all old contributions work with the latest osC, but some of them are now built in to osC, and others are done now in CSS. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blue Penguin Posted March 7, 2015 Share Posted March 7, 2015 Lady, From my experience upgrades are always messy and expensive. Especially if you have lots of custom code. I can’t see how osCommerce would be any different. If you are short on time the best I could recommend is to do cost analysis of profitability per month. Determine how much money you are loosing a month if the site is down and then get a budget ready for the upgrade based on those figures. At least this way you are prepared for the worst. I personally would want an exhaustive list of the custom changes I made on my site so that I can prioritize the ones that are necessary and budget for them accordingly. Upgrading depending on how much custom code you have could set you up for a “upgrade - fix - upgrade - fix” cycle that takes more time and money then just installing the latest version. I would also recommend a second site that you build in parallel to the working site so that what ever goes wrong goes wrong there and not the live site. By using a second site you can also keep the developers of the new site honest in the functionality as you have something to compare with. Without the original working site you are really flying blind. And this way you can keep your store up 100% and then just take it down for the switch over when the second site is ready. If you have (osc admin -> tools -> system info) page like 2.3.4 does I would print that out as a start so you know at least the current setup that is functioning with your site in case you are forced into changing hosts and getting the same site up some where else. Looking for more configuration info or even asking your host if there is a way to profile the entire site for how they have it setup so that you can recreate that somewhere else might be good as well. I believe some hosts can, as a service, transfer over your site for you into theirs, you would probably benefit from doing that before your current host does the upgrade that breaks the site. good luck. -BP Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rwood Posted March 8, 2015 Share Posted March 8, 2015 My company just finished (yesterday, in fact) a project for a new client, upgrading an existing 2.2 store to v 2.3.4. Our analysis, supported by many other Oscommerce developers, was that the most economical solution was to build a new 2.3.4 site on a server that already has the optimum architecture and environment that supports 2.3.4, and then export/import the critical data and photos from the existing site. In this case, there were no custom add-ons or coding to worry about, and the client and I had the luxury of essentially building a new site, with new features built-in, without interfering with the ongoing commerce. FYI, some 2.2 tables are missing fields that are found in 2.3.4 tables, and cause problems in importing the old data. Those fields need to be added to the old tables before importing the data. On the other hand, not all tables need to be exported/imported. Only those tables that contain important content need to be imported. These include any tables related to customers, orders, categories and products, primarily, along with reviews, shipping, payment options and gateways, etc. In some cases those need updating as well. We set up a new hosting account on our dedicated server, and registered a new domain name with an alternate extension (.net, in this case). then installed the new 2.3.4 site. We downloaded the existing template files and images, and FTPd them into the new site, installed a new SSL certificate, and made any changes necessary to the template. We configured the new site to look like the old site, exported the old database and imported it to exist side-by-side with the native 2.3.4, and then began grooming the old tables to match the new tables. Next, we exported the critical, newly-groomed essential tables, then imported the data from them into the native 2.3.4 tables, one-by-one. When we were done, the client had two, fully functioning websites with the same information in them, except one was modern, and one was obsolete. The advantage to this approach is that the variables in the transition are minimized, and there is no disruption to the existing store while the client becomes familiar with the new features built in to 2.3.4. Not only that, all of the latest contributions are compatible, and can be added and tweaked/tested. Once the client was fully happy, we shut down the existing store, posting the reason (new, improved, better features, etc.), updated the orders and customer tables for the last time, tested, and pointed the DNS to the new site. Total disruption to the site: 1.2 hours, done on a Friday night at 9:00pm. Finally, we reconfigured the the new store as .com, rather than .net, and the project was complete. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrPhil Posted March 8, 2015 Share Posted March 8, 2015 Yes, the database schema (layout) changes over time. You cannot directly import an old osC database -- you need to go step-by-step and upgrade the database, which adds new fields, etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rwood Posted March 8, 2015 Share Posted March 8, 2015 Leonie, Jan Zonjee inappropriately removed my email address from the bottom of my response to your request for offers to solve your problem. Jan labeled it as "advertising," but it was nothing of the sort. Best regards, Rob Wood Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
burt Posted March 8, 2015 Share Posted March 8, 2015 Yes, Rob, this is entirely inappropriate. Once again, your details have been removed. Take the time today to familiarise yourself with the forum rules. If you wish to offer 3rd party services, become a commercial sponsor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rwood Posted March 8, 2015 Share Posted March 8, 2015 Hi Burt, I have been a member of this community for 10 years. I have carefully read the rules. There is nothing in the rules that prevents a member from responding directly to a request for quotes to solve a problem for pay. It would be different if Leonie had limited her request to free advice or suggestions. I carefully explained, step-by-step, how my company just solved the exact problem she described. Calling my response "advertising" is simply a capricious interpretation of the rules. Becoming a sponsor is a business decision, and has nothing to do with responding to Leonie's specific request. She was the thread starter, and when she asked for offers, if responding to her request was inappropriate, then you or one of the other moderators should have edited her post, removing that request. By leaving that request for commercial offers intact, you implicitedly approved responses having to do with solving her problem for pay. Best regards, Rob Wood Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
burt Posted March 8, 2015 Share Posted March 8, 2015 I suggest you re-read the forum rules, paying close attention to rules 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 6.1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lady Lionheart Posted March 9, 2015 Author Share Posted March 9, 2015 Hi Everyone, Thank you for your responses. I guess I will temporarily move my webshop to a different host, with a redirect to my old domain so that my domain name remains and my webshop stays functional, and start to set up the new site on my old domain so that I can quietly work on the new website until it is ready. I'll first try to do it on my own, but if it takes too much of my free time or if some of the plugins won't work I guess I'll hire someone to do the remaining work. I do have some free time somewhere in april so I'll try to get it working in that time.I did not change around too much stylewise, I just added a background, and some colors using css. I guess it won't be too hard to get that look back on the new webshop? Also is there a list on which contributions are pre-installed?Some contributions I use aside from the payment and shipping ones are: more categories, more images, attributesetsplus, featured products, free shipping by cats, pickupinstore. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lady Lionheart Posted March 9, 2015 Author Share Posted March 9, 2015 I do have another problem, I have an old webshop online that I do not use anymore, I just need to be able to see the orders that were made for tax purposes. The csv exporters however that I have found up till now don't really work that well, since they don't say the product that was purchased or the status of the order. I don't want to transfer that domain and pay 60 euro per year just to be able to see the old orders. Any advice? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blue Penguin Posted March 13, 2015 Share Posted March 13, 2015 Lady, In response to your question about the old store and CSV. Do you have the ability to write SQL statements to the database? Access to the database? or is this through the web page interface only? What about FTP? If I were in your situation I would just do a database export of all the data and save that locally via something like mysql admin. This then can be imported to any other database. If I were to want just specific data or nicely formatted content writing a quick SQL statement would do the trick. Having access to the database makes this a whole lot easier. -BP Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ken0306 Posted March 13, 2015 Share Posted March 13, 2015 I do have another problem, I have an old webshop online that I do not use anymore, I just need to be able to see the orders that were made for tax purposes. The csv exporters however that I have found up till now don't really work that well, since they don't say the product that was purchased or the status of the order. I don't want to transfer that domain and pay 60 euro per year just to be able to see the old orders. Any advice? You can download your old database and your osc 2.2 file and install under your local computer. go find the xampp software, it is very easy to setup. ken Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lady Lionheart Posted March 21, 2015 Author Share Posted March 21, 2015 Thank you both for your suggestions, I will look into it. Then I can also cancel my webspace for that webshop and save some money :). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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