moving a full shop to a new host

[louis1st]

Hi,

 

I will have to move a full site from one host to another one, and would like your suggestions on how to do this....

 

I was thinking of simply using the backup option on oscommerce and then restoring it on the new site, but is this going to backup the product database or also all the other pages/pictures ?

 

what about the link to the new database if the path is different?

 

is this an incorrect way to do it?

how would you do it yourself?

 

all suggestions are welcome

 

thanks!

[peterr]

Hi,

 

I can't say there is a 'right' way, or a 'wrong' way to do this. There may be a component in the whole 'shift' that will determine how you _have_ to do it, that being the new host. Anyway, here is how i would do it, assuming you have a complete local copy of all the osCommerce source.

 

1. Old site - use phpMyAdmin or similar to backup the schema and the data to an .SQL file.

 

2. Old site - hopefully you have shell access, do a recursive "ls" , and pipe the output to a diskfile, it's a good way to quickly look at all the file/path permissions on your old site.

 

3. Old site - again with shell access, do a complete backup. Copy the files from steps 1, 2 and 3 to your local computer.

 

4. Take a backup of your local copy of the site, burn it on a CD if you can.

 

5. New site - FTP (SFTP is possible), and copy all your local files/paths to the new site. Alternatively, if you have shell acess on the new site, you can use the 'wget' command to retrieve all the files from your old site.

 

6. New site - Use phpMyAdmin or similar to create your new database (it might be wise to change username/s and passwords on the username, maybe even give the db a new name ?). Use phpMyAdmin to 'import' the schema and data from step 1.

 

7. Modify the 2 'config. files to reflect new passwords and new paths,etc.

 

8. New site - Upload the 2 'config' files.

 

That's about it I think. :D

 

Peter

[louis1st]

Thanks for this very complete reply!!

[Guest]

while you are awaiting dns propogation, on the old site you can set the configure.php files to point to the new site database, while the new site you can have it set to point to the same database. this way, you do not lose sales, etc. this way, the database is completely updated when the propogation completes.