upgrading existing site...

[george]

Is it as simple as importing a V6 snapshot?

[BilstonBob]

Hi George

Just my opinion......

I've completed a new large site this week (1,500 products). I've implemented significant customisation to templates, includes, properties, incorporated Nortree, check out process changes....you get the picture.

I tried the V7 upgrader in Developer and although it picked out the files I'd made changes to, it appeared to me that I'd have to redo an awful lot of changes I'd made, or spend eons sifting through the HTML trying to put things right and re-testing everything.

With an urgent deadline to meet I was a tad cross. It's not Actinic's fault, because V7 looks great and is a big improvement on V6. So I've got a work around from Actinic to enable my customer to work in V6 for now.

Anthony

[george]

Is it possible to transfer sections, orders and products only?

I've made quite a few small tweaks (to templates,etc) over the last few months, it might be best to start afresh.

I reckon a lot of peeps will be asking the same question very soon.

**In my original question, I meant can you import a V6 snapshot into V7?

[BilstonBob]

Sorry I didn't really answer your question first time. That's exactly what I did...i.e. import a V6 snapshot into V7. It does work and that's what the Upgrade helps you with, but you may have to make manual changes to the templates V7 doesn't like.

I think you should give it a go if you've only made minor changes to your templates. You'll probably find it works fine. Just make sure you back everything up first.

I know in developer you can Deploy a Snap shot, which gives you various options of exporting orders and templates, but it's quite limited.

[Jan]

When you install V7 you can choose to upgrade your existing site rather create an empty one - your old site will be left alone and you can carry on using it while you develop your V7 site. I expect that you have seen this already but Actinic are not recommending going live with V7 for existing sites until the first set of patches are out - more for caution I think than to avoid problems. V7 also has a test mode, so you would be able to upload your new site for testing as well - it is put into a subdirectory (test I think not sure).

Regards,

[Darren B]

Hi

i have done what you asked and the easiest way i found around it was to

export my theme from V6
export my colours from V6
take a snap shot of V6
install V7 but do not upgrade V6 yet

Then run V7 and import your theme & colour schemes
then import your V6 snap shot and then run the upgrader when prompted

Cheers
Darren

[george]

Would the best way be to install separate from V6? But would any (manual) changes made to templates in V7 be overwritten by importing a V6 snapshot?

A lot of us will have created a `newer` site using the demo of V7, and basically the only thing that would need imported is the (new, if any) products, levels and orders from the existing, working V6 site.

Just thinking ahead to having a smooth changeover. On behalf of the Community as well of course.

[Jan]

If your new site is ready to go and all you need from V6 is your products and order then I think that you can just copy for V6 database into your V7 directory, overwriting your V7 one and Actinic will automatically upgrade the database to a V7.

Regards,

[george]

"If your new site is ready to go and all you need from V6 is your products and order then I think that you can just copy for V6 database into your V7 directory, overwriting your V7 one and Actinic will automatically upgrade the database to a V7."

I assume you mean copy and paste the Actinic Catalog mdb file?

This overwrites a number of changes (made made manually to V7) with the `old` settings. ie colours, etc.

[Jan]

That was what I meant - sorry George, probably only good advice if you are just starting out with your development. You could get your product tree by exporting a catalog from V6 and then importing it into V7 but you will not move your orders across. Sorry again to have caused you extra work.

Regards,

[Darren B]

if you do it Jans way it works well, however if you have set up product groups you will need to do these again as they are not supported in V6, but all your template changes will still be there, so this is probably the easiest option

Cheers
Darren

[george]

After importing, copying and pasting and importing again, I now understand that Bilston Bob's second post does explain this.

Copying and Pasting. Basically if you use modded templates in version 6, and are now going to be using standard templates in version 7, the paths (fragments, product sections, products) will have to be changed after the new database has been pasted. This cannot really be done in preparation beforehand unless you edit your existing (V6) site.

I hope the above is correct, hopefully someone will correct me if I'm wrong. Kind of just thinking aloud, well, on the keyboard anyway.