upgrade from MS2.1 or add contributions?

[ozEworks]

I have a client running MS2.1. Looks like it is a fairly modifed version in terms of layout but I don't know anything of 2.1 .

 

They want to add things like:

 

Credit Class with gift voucher

Purchase without account

Combined login and create acct page

Recover Cart Sales 2.11 (or Tool)

USPS Methods

 

 

I figure that some of these things may be tricky to instal but I really don't know the difference between 2.1 and 2.2.

 

I tried to find how hard it was to upgrade to MS2.2 but I could not find any definite information and in fact I got confused about what I did find. :'(

 

So will it be easier/cheaper for them to upgrade then add these? If they have a non-standard look them we'd have to reinstall all that or is the upgrade able to handle this?

 

Anything else I need to be wary of?

 

thanks

 

Kym

[♥bruyndoncx]

I also have 2 clients on MS1. It is often a pain to install contributions, I mean real contributions that have admin and catalog changes.

Of course the more the site is modified, the more tricky the installation get, plus it also depends on how much of the original code was left in comments etc...

 

Particualrly CCGV is a pretty complicated install for which lots of bugs were reported and fixed in the MS2 version.

 

If this is a new client for you, I'd make the investment to get a solid understood codebase by upgrading to MS2.2, upon which it will be much easier to install additional contributions with minimal effort, and much better support for changes overall.

 

The upgrade to MS2 should not be too hard if they only have layout changes, no structural database changes, but it will ofcourse take time and effort to go through the details of the database and write some scripts to move the data from 2.1 to MS2.

 

BTW, are you sure that the layout changes are done in the code/css or with STS or BTS ?

[ozEworks]

I would not know for sure about the design. It looks like I need to go in and look at the code.

 

I was reading a post somewhere that implied there was some kind of upgrade option in the MS2.2 install but when I looked I could not see anything.

 

So is an upgrade really a completely new site with data and design conversion?

[♥bruyndoncx]

in the 2.2 MS2 installation, you find an extra directory with pr21_to_pr22 subdirectory.

Here you find a set of scripts to update an 2.1 db to 2.2 MS2.

This highlights the major database changes

 

I'm not sure what you mean by a 'design' conversion.

 

If you install MS2 and upgrade from 2.1 (not creating a new database) you essentially get a prepopulated MS2 database with your stores data from your 2.1 installation (assuming you use the same database).

 

Any design changes made will be lost, or you have to redo in the MS2 code.