Looking for help on moving online shop to another host

kaisersose77

Hopefully someone can help with this!

My Brother-In-Law and his friend have an online shop and B-I-L's Friend's Friend set up the website for them. But this guy has now gone home to Oz and they don't have any contact with him. He used www.mysitespace.com for hosting and the site uses zen cart and paypal as the payment system. This hosting company is meant to be crap and the site is down every so often. Their support is in India and are no help at all if there is any problems (usually caused by the hosts themselves). So they want to change over to an Irish hosting company if possible that will support zen cart and paypal (so if there is any problems they can get help). The B-I-L said the site designer tried at one stage to transfer over to digiweb, but digiweb didnt support paypal/zen cart or something like that (this was over 6 months ago I think). The site works fine atm, but as the 2 running the site dont know a lot about setting up websites etc, there fecked if this hosting company messes u again. It was down for a few weeks before and took hosts weeks to fix the problem.

If anyone has any suggestions to how they could move this website to Irish hosting with minimal hassle, it would be much appreciated. If any other info is needed let me know and I'll ask B-I-L.

aidan_walsh

Please bear in mind we do not allow hosting recommendations here, read the stickies at the head of the forum for details.

Any questions you have should be purely technical and provider agnostic. Any specific questions should be directed to the support desk of the (potential) host.

EKRIUQ

I've moved a Zen-Cart from an American host last month to an Irish host with no hassle

"Brief explanation"
Don't worry. Moving your Web site is easier than you think, and it doesn't involve changing your domain name or site downtime if you do it correctly.

The process of moving your Web site is straightforward; but there are several key steps you need to be familiar with before you start.

1 - Sign up for the hosting plan you require at yourhost.com

2 - Once activated, log into the system and upload your website, configure your email settings, databases, etc, just the way you require, using the Instant Access alias to preview everything.

3 - Log into your Domain Registration provider and modify the DNS servers for your domain to ours:

hosts servers

4 - Wait patiently It can take the internet several days (although normally no more than 72 hours) to 'realise' you've moved host. During this time some traffic will go to your old host and some to us.

5 - Once you are sure all has moved, and you are no longer getting traffic to your old host, you can cancel your account with them and inform them of same.

If you need any assistance at any stage, remember we are here 24/7 to help!

Note: When I transferred I went to 1.7 to 1.8a and had to patch the database but still easily done.

You will have to fix the configure files in the admin and the includes section to point to your new database and import your sql file.

I transferred to a tester website first as it was a working shop I didn't want any down time and everything went smoothly. But it can be a bit mind boggling if your not fully sure of what your doing.

I'm using a credit card payment system and I'm sure paypal would work too(It's the easiest to set up). Who ever moves it make sure they fully test it before pointing the DNS servers to your new host

If the above seems to be a bit foreign to do you should really get someone to do it for you and it can be done in 1 day no hassle and then a couple of days for the DNS to be pointed the right way, also it would be recommended to get a SSL cert just because you will be taking customer personal details.

Any problems I'm sure I could guide you through it.

axer

First thing you want to do is lower the TTL on the DNS records. You can bring it down to a really low value (down to 300 seconds should do the trick) so that it will take only a few minutes for your domain to start pointing to the new hosting. Otherwise it could easily take 24 hours to propagate i.e. before the domain name points to the new server. This will have to be done about 24 hours before you make the move.

Secondly you need to FTP to the website and copy down all the files to your computer and upload them to the new server. Then check that the file permissions are correct.

Thirdly you need to export the database from the current provider and import it into your new database server.

If you do the above there will be no delays between moving hosts and your B-I-L's customers will seamlessly move to the new server. Things are more complicated if you take payments directly on the website with SSL encryption.

kaisersose77

thanks for the replies

Sorry Aidan for missing the sticky, the info the other people provided is exactly what I am looking for. I'll look into the hosting myself.

I'l probably be the person who has to do all transfering, so could have to do some reading up.

Is it straight forward to ftp all the files to a pc? Is ir just a matter of connecting to the sites ftp server using the sites IP and whatever username and password it is?

Is it possible for me when I have all to files and have the files uploaded to the new hosting, to test out the site is working on the new hosting while the original site is still up and running?

axer

kaisersose77 wrote: »

Is it straight forward to ftp all the files to a pc? Is ir just a matter of connecting to the sites ftp server using the sites IP and whatever username and password it is?

Yes you could use FTP software such as Filezilla to copy the files to your computer and to then transfer them to the new host.

kaisersose77 wrote: »

Is it possible for me when I have all to files and have the files uploaded to the new hosting, to test out the site is working on the new hosting while the original site is still up and running?

You will need to also copy the database to your new host. You may not be able to test the website unless some settings are temporarily changed e.g. absolute paths to files, new DB host address etc.

If I were you I would change the DNS records on both the new host to low values so that you can easily flick back to the old host if the new one is not working out as expected.

cgarvey

kaisersose77 wrote: »

Is it possible for me when I have all to files and have the files uploaded to the new hosting, to test out the site is working on the new hosting while the original site is still up and running?

You can add the domain (and new IP) to your hosts file (Google for hosts file and your operating system). Restart your browser and you'll go to the new site (while everyone else goes to the old site).

EKRIUQ

I want to move my Zen Cart installation to another host or a different server

1. On your NEW host, create a new MySQL database. Note the username, password, database name, and host name (usually localhost).

2. Go to your NEW host and upload (FTP) a fresh NEW install using the same version files that you built your other site on.... this will make sure that you get the proper settings in your configure.php files...
While installing, allow it to install the demo products, so that you can test and be sure that it's working nicely.

a. Install (when asked about the database-table-prefix during Database-Setup, use the same prefix that your old store uses)

b. Test it.
c. Make backups of the NEW server's /includes/configure.php and /admin/includes/configure.php files by downloading them (FTP) to your PC.

3. On your OLD host, Make a COMPLETE backup of your DATABASE and STORE.
a. Use either the "Backup MySQL Database" contribution to do the backup of your database, or use phpMyAdmin to export your entire database ... include the "DROP" tables command, and under Data, choose "Complete Inserts" and "Extended Inserts".
Save the SQL file to your PC for later.

b. Download all your old site's files via FTP (or if you have the option, zip them up on the server and download the zip)

4. Now upload your OLD files over the NEW files on the NEW server, WITH TWO EXCEPTIONS: Don't overwrite the /includes/configure.php and /admin/includes/configure.php files on the NEW server.

5. Go back to phpMyAdmin on your NEW server.

a. Select your NEW database (that you installed the NEW Zen Cart into)
b. DROP all the tables. (Check them all and scroll down and on "With Selected..." select DROP. Confirm Yes.
c. Click on the SQL tab across the top (or "Import" on newer phpMyAdmin configurations) and click Browse.
d. Select the SQL file you made in step 3a when you exported your old database, and click Go.

6. Grab the "Fix_Cache_Key" utility to reset your Admin->Sessions->Session Directory key so that it uses the proper folder path for your new server:
http://www.zen-cart.com/index.php?main_page=product_contrib_info&cPath=40_54&products_id=82

Simply upload the file to your NEW Zen Cart folder and open fix_cache_key.php in your browser. It will give you status messages. Delete fix_cache_key.php when you're finished.

7. You're done. Open your store and admin areas to see it all ready to go!

And that's it

kaisersose77

thanks for the replies, I'll let the brother in law know and try and get the files from the ftp server