v11 to 2013 just too much work - or use hierarchical import

[EdHarrison]

I experimented with upgrading yesterday to 2013 on advice from support after upgrading to V11, I have upgraded right from V9 to V11 with small issues that were overcome fairly easily and expected.

To go to 2013 was just filled with issues, the site would be unworkable, very disappointing as my site has over a 1000 products so to start again would be simply too much work. In my opinion an upgrade should be to update not replace, days and days of work will be lost, I purchased Actinic (now Sellerdeck) and the yearly support based on the friendly user interface, I am not a programmer so have two choices, pay to have my site re-built or start from scratch, both options in Todays economic climate are very risky for my business.

I have only used Actinic software, no major custom work and all changes over the years have been simple like single page per products and dropping a few images in sidebars, all based on an Actinic theme which is now replaced and no longer appears in 2013 resulting in the loss of navigation and the section layouts for SPP.

I would suffer remaining on V11 but at some point support will be withdrawn - catch 22....

[Buzby]

I am having the same issue.

I have sites on V9, V10 and V11, all designed and upgraded in house and have used Actinic since V5.

I am currently trying to move the oldest V9 site to Sellerdeck 2013 but just can not get my head around this latest version.

I too am wondering how to continue as my V9 and V10 sites drastically need a makeover as they are dated, but 3K for a redesign is just not possible at the moment.

[ton]

Event if you don’t upgrade/start again now you will have to at some stage! And with all the changes this is the version to start afresh from.

Would you consider starting from scratch yourself, I had to do this on this release and it wasn’t as bad as I thought. I was able to export the products and re-import them into the fresh site. The only thing I lost was all the marketing lists and I had to manually re-imput the existing orders. It took the weekend to do and to tweak the design but overall it wasn’t the worst!

For SPP perhaps its time to start using the new single product per page function (but I admit this does take a little time to do product by product but the products will import into their original layout so you can work on this over the coming months.

Im not a programmer either but it was doable (however I do think that Sellerdeck is starting to get a little over complicated for the non programmers that use it).

Im sure if you need help on a particular aspect the lads here can help.

Tara

[mash]

I am planning to start a fresh, I feel it is a great way to clean up the code and move forward. It is like getting a new mobile phone and you can't import the numbers from the old one and you just put in what you need.

My concerned was all the old page names, I have overcome that by important the sections through Excel and csv file. I did not want to loose those due to search engines, but some are very poor so I will go through them slowly and rename.

What is the best way for dealing with old page names?

I have about 800 products but will tackle that via import.

So I see it has a positive process, you can always run a test site on the back of your current website.

My greatest concern is importing the orders.

I am going from Actinic v9 to SD13 so a biggish jump.

[peblaco]

If you are planning to rename old pages make sure you add 301 redirects via a file on the server, which will tell search engines to update the listing and redirect visitors.

[pmsupport]

Hi Ed,

Sorry to hear about the problems you have been having with your upgrade. I would suggest contacting support for help and advise with any outstanding upgrade issues you have. Upgrades can sometimes be tricky, but we are here to help:

http://www.sellerdeck.co.uk/support/

Thanks

[10outof10]

This is interesting reading - I have just started to have a play with the trail site and in the middle of uploading almost 8,000 products to to play with layouts and features.

Upgrading has always been an issue way back to V3 - the change from 10-11 being the most smooth.

From all accounts above however it sounds be tearing my hear out?

[Fairyglass]

I've just moved one of our sites from V11 to 2013- the site was originally built in V7 and upgraded each year. Rather than upgrade the usual way I used a hierarchical import to set up products, prices and page names, then reworked the design using the new features available. The process was a lot less painful than I thought it would be!

Keeping things basic, just installing a couple of add-ons from Drillpine and tweaking some layouts a little, the process took me less than a week. I used the opportunity to get rid of old products we were not going to continue, and change some page titles, and overall I'm really happy with the result. There's still work to do, but I've concentrated on the most important products first so there's less urgency.

We're already seeing an uplift in orders and page rankings have either stayed the same or improved. We don't have 8000 products, but I suppose what I'm trying to say is that if you're using a template that hasn't been hugely modified, the process is quite simple, as long as you take care. You can always revert back to the old site if things don't go according to plan perhaps?

Sorry for the essay

[10outof10]

Brill reply Fairyglass - there is hope then !! I'll keep going

[brucet]

Thanks for all comments. The design upgrade to SellerDeck 2013 is quite a big step, and I know some sites have found it more difficult than with previous versions. I'm sorry for any inconvenience this has caused. Please see below for an explanation of the reasons behind the upgrade, the benefits of upgrading, and some tips to help you with it.

As Paul has said, our support team are ready to assist with any issues, and I and members of our development team are available to help them if needed.

The code in the previous layouts was extremely old, in some cases harking back to the origins of the Actinic software in 1996. HTML standards and browser & search engine technology have moved on a long way since then. The old code was no longer compliant with current standards, causing a number of issues.

1) Some elements of the old code were no longer recognised by new browsers, making it increasingly difficult for us to maintain and designers to work with.
2) Many of the old themes were no longer search engine friendly.
3) The old code failed HTML validation (we have not fully resolved this, but we have taken steps towards a resolution).
4) The old theme structure was evolved rather than designed, and quite restrictive. The Design Wizard allowed you to reposition page elements, but did not produce very attractive designs. The Themes looked better, but locked the page layout into a specific arrangement. In SellerDeck 2013 the Design Wizard can be used to rearrange and restyle the major page elements in any of the new Themes, and you can choose between different page layouts with different sidebars etc.

The options for upgrading are:
1) Choose to upgrade an existing site when you install SellerDeck 2013, or install a virgin copy and then import your old snapshot. If you are using an unmodified or lightly modified theme from an earlier version, the upgrader will normally handle it without issues.
2) After a site upgrade, if you want to switch to a new theme, you should do so initially via page 1 of the Design Wizard, not the Themes menu, to ensure you have the right layouts to match the theme.
3) For a clean start to the design, Export your product catalogue to a hierarchichal file (File | Export); import that into a clean SellerDeck 2013 site (File | Import), and then import the orders from your old site (File | Import Orders).
4) If you have any problems, please don't hesitate to contact SellerDeck Support. We are here to help.

[Steve G Griggs]

Upgrade from V11 to 2013.

Like Bruce says
I have found the best way to upgrade from V11 to 2013 is as suggested to use a hierarchical file import. Once you get the basics of doing an import right I found that it's relatively straightforward.
You need to remember two things when importing a hierarchical csv:
1) Turn off the auto generate product references setting.
2) Make sure all the necessary image files are in the right folder, otherwise the import fails. (You end up with a correctly populated brochure and nothing in the catalogue, that's what happened to me a few times).

Upgrading from V11 to 2013 seems to be much easier using an import than a snapshot, but then I had heavily modified the layouts etc.

[EdHarrison]

Still not too happy

Well I had to resort to paying for a company to do the upgrade, even they cannot resolve a problem with SPP not showing prices / more info until the section is viewed first! Over a 1000 instances of this would be needed to cure it. Their hands are tied until Sellerdeck gets it right.

I now have to put this on hold until a further release resolves this, the issue can be found in another post where Krithika admits it will be looked at in a future release.

I will have to pay again for further upgrade work when the release fixes this as in the meantime I have to publish price changes and add new products.....

[musicscotland]

clean install SD2013 and Hierarchical Import rather than Snapshot

3) For a clean start to the design, Export your product catalogue to a hierarchichal file (File | Export); import that into a clean SellerDeck 2013 site (File | Import), and then import the orders from your old site (File | Import Orders).

Hi folks - I'm considering doing a fresh install of SD2013 and Hierarchical Import of products and orders, rather than a Snapshot, as I'd like a clean database to start from. I have no Customer Accounts.

How could I import the actual Design though, through a Design Snapshot? Or better to manually go through the Layouts and implement changes?

I'd like to use the Product Page feature for single product pages, but currently the structure is single products in subsections. Will the Product Hierarchical Import support this change?

I also use Extended Info pages, will these be lost with the Product Page option?

Thanks!

[mediamole]

Also anyone wanting to move from extended info pages to single product per pages without loosing .HTML page names etc this is achievable! depending on the size of your site it's a 1 to 2 hour job

[musicscotland]

I'd like to use the Product Page feature for single product pages, but currently the structure is single products in subsections. Will the Product Hierarchical Import support this change?

Just to follow up, to upgrade this v10 site (which had itself been upgraded) to SD2013, I decided on a completely clean install. A Snapshot import resulted in too many Layout changes for me to be confident of being able to use SD2013's latest functionality - I can't see how this could be an option at all for Designs that have been heavily modified.

I'm redesigning from a scratch Theme, and expect to modify this from a fixed-width layout into a flexible responsive design similar to the current site musicscotland.com

I managed to convert all of the old single-product subsections into new separate Product Pages using an Export of existing products and modifying a Hierarchical Import file. This has really improved the product management - highly recommend it! The Product Page Conversion Tool didn't work here, since for several thousand products, this manual step just isn't an option:

you will need to move your products into their parent sections and delete the single-product subsections