new snapshot? - new checkout process worth changing over?

[gwmbox]

Hi

 

I'm curenlty using an older snapshot from about April this year and it appears to be working well, however I am wondering what the benefits of the new checkout process is and if its worth upgrading to a new snapshot?

 

All comments appreciated.

 

Thx

[Ian]

If everything is working for you, then follw the rule

 

If it aint broke, don't fix it

 

A lot of oeople get obssessed about continually updating their live shops against current cvs. Why. If your store is working, with no bugs. then you should be a happy bunny.

 

The new checkout system, looks nicer and provides more facilities for setting the shipping/billing address. It is quite sexy.

 

But agiain I repeat. If your store is working without problems, then be happy. You are not missing anything.

[twinmoons]

I am also very much interested in the new checkout process. Is there a demonstration of this setup somewhere? The demo version on the osCommerce site is from 03/16/2002.

[Ian]

I have a demo running at

 

www.phesis.co.uk/mystore/catalog/

[twinmoons]

Thanks Ian, I appreciate it. I just checked it out and I love the new checkout process. Now I really want to upgrade, but it's going to be a nightmare considering that my 2.2 version is heavily hacked. I'll keep you guys posted if I make a successful upgrade.

[twinmoons]

Well, I'm realizing that this is going to be tougher than I thought. The database structure has changed quite a bit for the data for orders. It used to store the shipping costs in the 'orders' table, but this has been split up. Also, additional fields have been added for billing address info.

 

The biggest challenge at this point is exporting the orders info so that it can be used with the new tables so that customers can still access info about their previous orders. Has anyone deviced a plan to do this?

[gwmbox]

I think I am lucky then our shop is not yet live - so based on that would you recommend I update first? I have done some heavy testing and yes the current one I use works well, but still since its not yet live should I update???

 

However I too heavily hacked the snapshot I have - will the hacks work on the newer version?

 

Greg

[twinmoons]

Well, so far all the hacks that I made in the previous are working with the new version. The checkout process really is wonderfull. BUT, I still haven't figured out how to port the old 'orders' table to the new format.

 

Here's what I did so far:

 

. On the test server created two databases, one for the existing site and one for the upgraded site.

. I went through EVERY table and noted any changes made For some of my hacks, I had added fields to various tables so I did this to the upgrade version as well.

. Imported all products, categories, categorie relationships, etc. to the new db

. I created two separate directories for the old and new files.

. I made a list of all my hacks and went back and tried to figure out exactly which files they affected

. In the new version, I started with the SIMPLEST hack and tried to integrate it with the new code. So far so good.

. I'm still in the process of finishing the customization on the new files. A bunch of the files had changed. For example, new functions have been added in includes/functions/general.php, html_output.php, database.php, etc. The stylesheet has changed as well, so I had to merge the changes I had made to my stylesheet with the ones in the latest version.

 

All I can say is, look forward to a few sleepless nights! If i figure out a way to port the db data, I'll definitely keep you guys posted.

 

Best Regards,

 

Tamim

[zzfritz]

I upgraded to the new checkout process without going through any such girations regarding the database changes. Just added the new columns and left the existing records intact. Orders from before 11/1 have blank billing addresses, but everything else looks fine. Why does twinmoons believe the database needs to be 'ported'?

[twinmoons]

Well, I don't know how old your version of the db was, but in mine, the orders table has some fields that store the shipping costs and shipping method in it. In the new version, the shipping costs and shipping method is not stored in the 'orders' table. There is a new table called 'orders_total' that stores this additional info. I have tried just dumping the old data in the orders table, it won't work.

[zzfritz]

I was working with a snapshot from 8/4/02, kept pretty current with major CVS commits, so maybe that made the difference. We went live on 10/15, and have order data since then. The upgrade on 11/1 was no big trauma.

[twinmoons]

Well, you're lucky! My last version was from somewhere in November last year. I hadn't kept up with CVS because I made way too many hacks to it :)

[unistar]

I too have put and modified osc 2.2 to the max. What's the minimum upgrade change/test needed to get the new checkout procedure without backward engineering the whole new CVS? Any shortcuts appreciated!

[twinmoons]

Well, I was hoping for a shortcut too, but I don't think there is one. As a test, I tried to integrate just the login page into an old 2.2 cvs and that had plenty of changes:

- New functions were added in general.php function lib

- New functions were added in database.php function lib

- New functions were added in html_output function lib

And a few other changes. SO, I just started with the new CVS and am integrating all my hacks into it. It is going pretty well so far.

[unistar]

I just did some searching and found some shortcuts:

 

from:

zzfritz: http://sonnybargercycles.com/log_checkout_mods.txt

 

and from:

Mr. Ree: (more other tips)

 

Hope this helps all!

[twinmoons]

Thank you!!

[Guest]

Have I got this right? To upgrade to the sexy new checkout procedure do you just make all the changes to individual files (and create 11 new fields to db) as per zzfritz's shortcuts instead of installing the whole new snapshot. If I got it right, I can use the new checkout process without losing all my mods - right?

[mattice]

It depends on your osC version. Like TwinMoons (Hello, welcome back :) )

I have a seriously hacked march 2002 snapshot.

That snap did not include the breadcrumb logic, the order_class (which is needed for the new checkout) and the new checkout.

In order to have all of the above I had to copy quite a bit of functions to both admin and catalog. (general.php / html_output.php / database.php) as well besides all the little changes / improvments to the code here and there. But it worked ( took me 2 days diffing... )

 

If you have a snapshot that has the order_class (look in your database for order_total table) I think you will succeed with the Fritzz log.

 

HTH

Mattice

[twinmoons]

Umm, not quite. I gave up on modifying the old files. I started with a clean install of the latest CVS and re-hacked the files I had hacked in the previous version. It's been about a full week of work so far, but it's working very nicely and I am definitely happy with it. Just a little bit more beta testing and we'll be launching our site with the new version.

 

 

Have I got this right? To upgrade to the sexy new checkout procedure do you just make all the changes to individual files (and create 11 new fields to db) as per zzfritz's shortcuts instead of installing the whole new snapshot. If I got it right, I can use the new checkout process without losing all my mods - right?

[twinmoons]

Hi Mattice, glad to be back :)

 

I've been just a tad bit busy, but finally made my way back! Glad to see you around.

 

It depends on your osC version. Like TwinMoons (Hello, welcome back :) )

[Guest]

Hey mattice,

good to hear from you. And yeah - I do have the order_total file in the db. This is sounding good for me huh!. I will struggle with a couple of things but I got this far and believe I could get it going. Do you think though that it will take me as long as a 2 days to a week? That kind of might stretch me a bit (don't see much of my family any more since I took on this project).

 

By the way - I've got the "schools mod" drop down box up and running thanks so much to "ocularmagic". (you may remember you replied to a post re: "Drop Down Box" for schools, clubs etc of mine and were going to help me out when you weren't so busy - it was a while ago) He really is a great guy and helped me out heaps.

 

BTW did you see my post about twin sites 20 mins ago? You would know the answer to this one for sure?

[Guest]

Hi twin moons,

To just install the new snapshot and get it running how you wanted. Did you just like change the stylesheet and all the files that had your mods. I have so many little things here and there I guess I would just use the new site until a page opened up that I noticed didn't have my changes and just change them over as I discovered them. And by changes I mean the whole file. Or do you mean to edit the snippets here and the snippetts of code there. I'm in two minds which way to go about it.

[twinmoons]

Hi PC,

 

Well, it sounds like you are in a better position than I am for starters. My old version was from November, 2001! There was not orders_total table so I had to write some scripts that grabbed all the data from the old orders tables, calculated the new values for the orders_total tables and populated the new db. Hopefully you won't have to do that since you have a newer CVS version.

 

I went through all my old files and made an inventory of all the hacks I've made and put it in a spreadsheet. The I started with the easiest one, and just went down the list. Some of them didn't work due to some code changes in the new version, some worked without any changes. Some files I pretty much just copied over from the old version as well and maybe had to change a couple of lines.

 

I would really recommend starting with a new clean snapshot. First make sure it runs fine without any of the hacks or mods. Then try replacing some of its files with your old files and see if it works. Obviously anything related to checkout most likely won't work.

[Guest]

Thanks twin moons

This is a double loaded question (coz you may be helping me at the same time with another post I put out there tonight [my time]), but can I install the new snapshot - say in another directory so I can fool around with it and so that my live site still works. And what are the implication re: the database. Would I have to create a new one?

[twinmoons]

Yes, you can definitely install the new snapshot in a different directory. Just make sure you edit the /includes/configure.php files accordingly with the correct paths. You definitely want to make sure to create a new database for it because for it so that it doesn't mess with the data on your live site.

 

What I did for my case is that I just took my old clunker 333 Mhz pc and turned it into a test server and installed everything on it. I've also talked with my web host who is willing to create a second db for testing when I'm ready. So if your site is hosted somewhere, you might want to contact them and ask them if they can setup a test environment for you.

 

BTW, you should be able to dump most of your db tables straight from your live site's db to the new version's db.