Copying OSCommerce from online website to Local PC

[troubleshooter2000]

Hello Gurus:

I am having a great difficulty copying OSCommerce installation from my functioning web store to my local PC which I would like to use as a development machine. This is what I have already done.

1. Successfully installed IIS, PHP and MySQL in my local PC.

2. Copied the OSCommerce files from website to my loacal PC's IIS folders.

3. Copied the database (exported from the website and ran the script in my local) into my local MYSQL.

4. Updated configure.php in both include folder and admin/include folders so that it points to localhost and also the local database with proper authentication information.

 

The localhost seems to work fine. When I type in //localhost/ into a browswer and it takes me to the default page. Just to make sure that the page is able to talk to the database, I check "sessions" table, and an entry is created for the opening of the page with sesskey = 3lanqthj2tpqu1hatmp53i4pe6. So far so good.

 

Here's my problem.

P1. When I click on my links, eg., http://localhost/about_us.php?<?=$SID?>, it takes me to the page but there is something peculiar about the URL with <?=$SIC?>. But otherwise, the display of the page seems to be fine. In the online store, <?=$SID?> is never displayed in the address bar.

P2. This is the main problem. When I try logging in using a valid authentication (that works perfectly in the website), I get "The Page cannot be found" error. The address bar shows http://localhost/login.php/action/process?osCsid=3lanqthj2tpqu1hatmp53i4pe6

 

I am almost certain this problem has to do with session id's. I have googled a lot but could not find any information specific to this issue. I am new to both php and oscommerce. Does the gurus out there know what is going on in my local server?

 

Thanks in advance.

[MrPhil]

If your web server is Apache, rather than IIS, I would suggest installing WAMPP (Apache-based) rather than IIS. You'll probably find it much easier to manage than IIS. However, if your web server is IIS, you might as well stick with it for consistency.

 

If you just want a sandbox to play in, how about installing a second version of your store in a subdirectory on your live site? Just make sure it has a separate database. You might password-protect access to the sandbox system just to be sure no one stumbles across it.