Upgrade & swap between PC's

[leehack]

Hi All

Firstly, anyone who take the time to read and respond to this thank you.

I have been building my first ever website and actinic catalogue for a friend whose website failed miserably, despite paying good money for it.

The previously designed website used Actinic 6 for its shopping cart, although many of the products and layout was unusable, my friend had already paid for it, so i decided to use this also.

I have been developing a new website for him and populating the catalogue on my own laptop. During this development, we have also upgraded to Actinic 7. So existing site is on Actinic 6 on the PC in the shop and i have my laptop with Actinic 7 loaded with his new shop. I also have a test website where i have been uploading the new website and the catalogue for viewing and testing.

I am almost ready to go live and would appreciate your advice. I have these steps written down with regards to all the things i need to do and remember!

1 - I have to upgrade the existing machine to version 7 and then upgrade with the software updates (as i did with my machine) off the Actinic site. This means i have identical software on the new and old catalogues. This after ceasing trading on the site an hour before doing so.

2 - Download a copy of the existing website (for re-install should it all go tits up).

3 - Upload new website to existing server.

4 - Reproduce the catalogue, on my laptop, onto the existing PC. THIS I FEEL I MIGHT MISS SOMETHING!! I have changes many settings and templates, many changes helped by you guys!!! If i back up the version on my laptop and then use this back up to "restore from back-up" on the existing machine, will this do all i need apart from the template changes? In other words, if i copy all of the templates also from my laptop into the equivalent directory on the existing machine, will this have given me an exact copy of the new catalogue on the old machine?

5 - Change settings of the new catalogue on old machine, so they point to correct URL's and mailboxes etc.

6 - Do a "refresh website" on the old machine, so that the new catalogue is now sitting on the old machine and up to date.

7 - test test and test!!!

Anything obvious missed guys and gals? I also have Actinic support for a year, but thought this place seemed full of knowledge and i just didn't want to possibly get advised wrongly by a person who wasn't quite up on this sort of move and thought the more people that could see, the more chance i have of missing nothing out.

Really appreciate any help you can provide.

Cheers


Lee

[jont]

Hi Lee,

the steps and procedure look OK.

1. bets to use 7.0.4 as this appears more stable than 7.0.5 at the moment IMHO

2. you can't download a copy from the website as it is compiled pages - best to do a full site1 folder copy on the shop PC and also a snaphot and save to cd etc that way you can get back the database and original templates back into v6 if needed.

3. if you upload you will only need to upload again from the old PC when the data is loaded as the time stamp on the files will not match those on the server.

4. create a snapshot from your copy to import back into the shop PC. I would also take a full site1 copy of the data and drop on CD "jus in case". Best to make sure all images are within the site1 folder or sub-folders thereof if not already.

5. settings should be set automatically in the shop PC when you import the snapshot (unless you are still on the test site)

6. a full upload will be needed from the shop PC

7. bet your last dollar the first page the client sees there will be an error


Good luck with the migration

[wjcampbe]

1. Don't upgrade the v6 Actinic on the shop PC. Load v7 alongside (it creates a folder called Actinic v7 which keeps it all seperate), then delete v6 after everything is confirmed working. That's the way to keep what you have as a fallback position.

Step 2 will be the snapshot transfer from your machine to his and do a full site preview on his machine. (File snapshot export on yours - file snapshot import on his).

Step 3. Turn off online ordering on the v6 site, wait minimum 30 minutes and download any existing orders. After download and processing, delete all Actinic files on the server which are inside the cgi-bin and acatalog folders (don't delete anything in cgi-bic that is not Actinic).

Step 4. Test settings, then do the site upload from the shop machine and test from your browser, including Payment method testing.

Step 5 Backup the v6 folders to CD. Go live on v7 and remove the v6 installation from the shop PC.

Hope it goes smoothly for you.

[leehack]

Thanks for the replies so far guys, been really helpful. Anyone who reads this and thinks, yep nothing to add, can i ask you to say so in here. The more people who say yes fine, the happier i will be, not that i disbelieve the guys who have posted already.

The existing site is http://www.birminghammodelcentre.co.uk

The new site which will me migrated onto the above address is currently sitting on http://www.bhammodelcentre.co.uk

One thing i am not sure on how to do is change the actual website, not Actinic. I have pulled a copy of it down into dreamweaver for reinstall, do i just go to the relevant directories an delete the old files and then just do a site upload with my new pages?

Be great if any feedback is received.

Many thanks

Lee

[jont]

Lee - are you using the customers version of v7 to upload to the new URL? If so the license will be now registered against the new URL so the new site will need to sit on the new URL and not the existing!

[leehack]

Hi Jont

I have loaded Actinic 7 on my laptop and been using it to upload to the test site. Once im ready to migrate, i will de-install on my laptop and the shop PC will then be upgraded to version 7.

Once migrated all work will continue on the shop PC and my laptop will have nothing more to do with it, apart from uploading the dreamweaver part of the site.

Am i going to have problems with this then?

We effectively have 2 products, Actinic 6 & 7. Currently each PC has its own copy, shop on 6 and laptop on 7, there will only ever be one in use, it was merely loaded on my laptop so that i could do a lot of work from home, rather than sit in the shop on the PC which is used throughout the day for various other things.

[jont]

You may need to speak to Actinic regarding the license issue. When the site is uploaded to the new URL that site is registered against the license number on the Actinic database ..... when you migrate if you are uploading to the existing old site the URL is different so could trigger their anti-pitacy alarms ... even though it is the same person and the same license it has been used against 2 different URL's.

It is no problem for you to keep the copy on your machine so long as the 1 license is being used on the same URL. Many developers do this for their customers when updating.

May be worth giving Actinic a quick call to explain the situation before you go live in front of the customer!

[Bruce]

Lee,

Did you call in and check with support on this? I would suggest, installing v7 independent of v6 on the PC, making snapshot of the v7 on the laptop and importing that into the v7 instllation on the PC.

Configure the the Network settings on the v7 bit to point to the http://www.birminghammodelcentre.co.uk domain.. The other ground rules have already been pointed out to you by Bill and Jont.

Kind regards,

[leehack]

Hi Bruce

I havn't called them yet no, im working from home today and have no details on where to phone etc.

Thanks to you all for your help, i think i have it all covered now - just fingers crossed. I must say i don't quite grasp the "snapshot". What does this do different to restore from back-up etc?

One final point i could do with confirming. I have selected a theme and have changed many templates. To ensure all my template changes are incorporated on the new machine, do i just copy all templates from my laptop onto the shop machine once ive got them both on the same version?

Can someone just confirm the folders i need to do this copy from and also the best way to ensure that the shipping methods i have set up on my laptop are also moved over seamlessly.

many thanks guys

Lee

[wjcampbe]

You should not need to copy anything manually.

What everybody is trying to tell you, is that unless you have template files, image files or something else outside the recommended, default site1 folder, then an Actinic snapshot will carry ALL the required files across, including the product and shipping databases.

A snapshot is a zip file under another name. When you export a snapshot, it follows a scripted list of files and locations to include into the zip file (Actinic has prepared this list of all the non-site1 folders and files required). When you import the snapshot, it expands (unzips) the files into the correct folders on the second machine.

The only time (usually) a snapshot will result in a broken website is if you have tried to reference images which are not in the site1 folder, or saved your changed templates outside the site1 folder.

There are a couple of unusual circumstances that can arise, but these can be dealt with if and when.

[leehack]

Many thanks Bill, excellent post and help.

Congrats to whoever included snapshot into the software, i will sleep well tonight now!!!

Cheers guys

Lee