Guest Posted August 11, 2015 Share Posted August 11, 2015 Hey everybody, OK, first and foremost, think of me as somebody looking to work on their car who doesn't even know what model of car they have, where the latch to the hood is, etc. Please forgive me but I'm at a loss. I had an oscommerce store running for 13 years hosted by speedypuppy.net, all was well, I could log in, see orders, create reports, print invoices and add tracking info, etc. Speedypuppy recently closed and I transferred my site to hostgator.com and now I have no idea how to access the store in the form that it once was. Here's where I may be asking a very dumb question, but they (hostgator) transferred my entire site over, and I can log into the php database through my HG control panel but then everything is extremely difficult to navigate. Am I missing something, or was the store and how I accessed it before part of the Speedypuppy experience? Thanks so much for your time! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrPhil Posted August 11, 2015 Share Posted August 11, 2015 osCommerce since 2002? I hope you have been regularly updating your store. You should be at osC 2.3.4 by now. Failure to keep updated leaves you open to hackers and problems when your host updates PHP and other supporting software. If your old host was letting you coast by on a very old osC version (running on a very old PHP version), your transfer to your new host may have brought with it an up-to-date PHP level that your old store is incompatible with. You could be getting lots of system errors and not recognize them as such, or the store could be running, but behaving oddly, due to errors and incompatibilities. I guess the first questions would be, what version of store are you trying to run, and what PHP and MySQL versions was your site running on on Speedypuppy? By the way, there's no such thing as a "php database". The database is MySQL. There is a tool called phpMyAdmin that can be used to maintain your MySQL database -- presumably that's what you're thinking of. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ArtcoInc Posted August 12, 2015 Share Posted August 12, 2015 @@diskologyllc Hey there, Tony First off, welcome aboard. Get ready for a wild ride B) 1) When you moved your store to HostGator, I hope that you also moved your domain to them. If not, you need to contact both your registrar and HostGator to have them point your DNS record to HostGator. Otherwise, when you type in www.YourSite.com into your browser, it will continue to try to find you site on SpeedPuppy. 2) Before you do anything else, I *strongly* urge you to make a complete backup of your site. This include copying *all* of the files *and* a backup of your database to your local computer. If you don't know how to do this, you need to learn how to, and fast. There will come a time when you will have to fix things that have broken, and the best (if not only) way is to be able to do a backup and/or restore. 3) Having made sure that your registrar and your hosting company have the DNS correct, and you have a full backup of your files and database, let's see what is working, and what isn't. When you launch your browser, and type in <yoursite.com>, what happens? If your type in <yoursite.com/catalog>, what happens? If you type in <yoursite.com/catalog/admin>, what happens? 4) osCommerce consists of three (3) components: the code, the database, and the configuration files (there are 2 of them). When all of these are happy with one another, you have a happy (and hopefully profitable) store. But, if any one is not happy, everything can come to a screeching halt. You said that HostGator transfered your site. They probably were able to move everything 'as is', but, as you're finding out, that doesn't mean that things are going to work as they used to. Your 'code' and the 'database' are probably fine. It's probably the configuration files that are going to have to be edited. 5) We're going to look at your configuration files. I prefer to edit a COPY of the file on my local computer, and then transfer it up to my host's server. You CAN edit the files directly on the host's server ... I just prefer to do it on my local computer. In a stock osCommerce installation, everything in installed in the /catalog directory, and all of the files (code) are in this directory, or are in sub-directories under it. Please pay attention as there are a number of sub-directories that have the same name, but are in different branches. For example, the two configuration files we need to look at are: /catalog/includes/configure.php /catalog/admin/includes/configure.php Both files have the same name, and are in a sub-directory names 'includes', but are in different branches. It is easy to get confused, so do pay attention. Within each of these configuration files is the 'information' explaining where the store is (both in relationship to the host's server configuration, and in relationship to the entire World Wide Web). Also, this is where the information defining where the store's database is (on the host's serve), including the user name and password needed to access that database. If *any* of this information is not right, your store won't work. You may need to get some of this new information from HostGator. You can post your configuration files here if you have specific questions (just be sure to edit out your database user's name and password). 6) One last note ... you said that your site had been running on SpeedPuppy for 13 years. If you have not updated your site since then, you are running a *VERY* old version of osCommerce. There were a number of security issues with the old version. Also, as more and more hosts are upgrading their servers to newer versions of PHP, store owners with old sites are experiencing crashes and site failures. It would be advisable to upgrade your site to the newest version of osCommerce (or, even better, the community built responsive version). Mind you, this is not just applying a patch. This is building a new store from scratch, and importing the database from your old store. 7) As I have been teaching my kids since they were old enough to ignore me... There are three ways to do something in this world: a) Do it yourself. If you don't know how, learn, or b) Pay someone else to do it, or c) It don't get done. You can obviously pay someone to 'manage' your store for you. And, that may be a better use of your time (and money). But, I think that my store is so important to my business, I want to know how it works, and how to fix things if/when they break. Yes, this means time and effort on my part. Good luck! Malcolm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted August 12, 2015 Share Posted August 12, 2015 Thank you, thank you, thank you ArtcoInc and MrPhil! Admittedly I realize how out of my league I am on this stuff but you've definitely given me a great primer on how this all works and what I need to look for. I'm on it! I'll post back with how things turn out. THANK YOU! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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