Upgrading To The 4th Gen Site Store Pro eCommerce Platform From Previous Platform

Post Date: Aug 24, 2023

The new 4th generation of Site Store Pro is an all-new platform with a completely different file structure, a unified CSS system and tons of features that are not available in the previous 3rd gen PHP platform. (See Release Post)

Unlike upgrading an existing platform to a newer release version or applying updates to a current install where you simply need to update the two application directories /sitestorepro/ and /estore_admin/, migrating to the new 4th gen platform from a 3rd gen installation (prior to August 1st, 2023 and/or before version 2.2308) requires a complete upgrade of the installation.

Please note that your 3rd generation platform installs will continue to run fine and we will continue to release security and critical application patches to that platform (if required).

However, the new 4th generation platform contains the latest mobile tech, a more optimized customer shopping experience, dozens of new core cart features and unlike past platforms, the new 4th gen system including AUTOMATIC application updates as well as a fully customizable admin system that can be upgraded even after customizing.

To upgrade a previous 3rd generation install, please follow the instructions below.

If you need assistance, please contact support or if you would like a quote for our team to migrate your install to the new platform which includes skinning the new front-end files to match your current site design, creating a development server to fully test the integration/conversion without affecting your live site and then launching the converted (new) site without any downtime, please submit a ticket with your site URL and any pertinent informaton on the install such as customizations, payment processor being used, current cart release version of the live site, etc.

UPGRADING AN EXISTING SITE STORE PRO SITE (PRIOR TO AUGUST 1st, 2023)

If you are upgrading an existing site that was installed prior to August 1st, 2023, you should do the install in a clean directory with a COPY of your current Site Store Pro database.

Important: Do not simply post the files inside the 'Upgrade' folder to migrate your past install to the new platform. Unlike upgrading an existing install to a new version of the same platform, you must do a NEW install and then convert your data over and then recreate your design on the new install since it is entirely new file structure and CSS system. The 'Upgrade' folder is only to be used for installs already running the new platform that were installed after August 1, 2023.

Do not overwrite a live install with the new 4th gen platform release. Unlike all past versions of the cart, this is a completely new platform and therefore the upgrade process is very different.

The upgrade process to convert the previous generation to the new platform is:

Do a complete backup of all the files and the mysql database on your current site.
Create a new folder in a sub-directory off of your main site (or use a development server) for your "new" site.
Create a new MySQL database with entirely different login credentials than your live site.
Copy your live MySQL db tables and data to your new temp development database.
Extract the contents from the new platform download
Enter the credentials from your development database into /Connections/SiteStoreProDB.php
Upload the contents from the /New_Installation/ Folder to your development site.
Copy the /store_content/ folder from your live (previous platform) server to your development site and overwrite any files with the same name (if prompted).
Go to the new development site's /estore_admin/ to upgrade your old DB into the new platform schema. The database will be automatically converted from the previous platform to the new schema when you load /estore_admin/ for the first time.
Once you are logged into the admin, you will need to recreate your site design/skinning either through the web-based CSS system (CMS - > CSS) or you can skin the files locally with your favorite editor such as Dreamweaver or Visual Studio code and then upload them.
Recreating your previous design into the new platform will typically take the most time of the conversion process. Expect to spend anywhere between an hour and 6 hours (or more...depending on the complexity of your previous design) to recreate all the specific elements, color scheme and widgets location on the new platform to match your previous design. (View Tutorials)

Please note that this may be a good time to clean up or modernize your design and site branding since you will need to recreate it anyway. There are many new features in the 4th gen platform such as item scrollers, lists and new dynamic content plugins that can be used to provide a more complete user experience.

IMPORTANT:

After you visit the /estore_admin/ of the new install for the first time, make sure that if you add any new products or make any product edits on the old (LIVE) site, that you DUPLICATE those changes or additions on the new site as well. Don't worry about orders, customers and payments data. Order related data will be imported (synched) before launching the new site.

However, you will need to duplicate any product related edits or site page content edits since that data will not be re-synched again on the new install. (I.e. if you add a new product on the old site, add it at the same time on the new site so the number of items and product IDs match). You can so a full re-synch if for some reason your data becomes mismatched but it is much easier to simply duplicate any products or site-content (CMS) changes that you make on the live site on the dev site during the development time-period for the new platform migration. (Instructions on a full re-synch are at the bottom of this document).
Make sure that you go to CMS > Logo Upload and post up logos for the different screen sizes plus the 'sticky' header logo (icon) if you will be using a header with different content for different screen sizes plus using the default sticky header menu.
If you need some basic starter instructions on skinning your install to your previous site design, please skim through the 4th gen design integration tutorial that is specific to your install type (Designer or Dreamweaver).
After the new site has been reskinnned to match your old site, you will want to copy over your payment processor plugin files from the /sitestorepro/plugins directory on your old site (only copy the payment processor(s) that you are using but do not copy any of the other plugins)
Once the payment plugin(s) have been copied to the new installation, login to your OLD admin area and copy the payment processor credentials from your OLD install into the plugin settings on the new install.
If you are using real-time shipping rates, you will need to copy the login credentials for each of the shipping providers from the OLD admin plugin settings to the corresponding plugin settings on the new admin.
After you have setup your payment and shipping providers, run some test orders on the new install to verify that everything is correct.
Put the previous platform (old) site in offline more under Store Setup > Store URL.
Put the new site on the development server in offline mode under Store Setup > Store URL
Make a FULL backup of your new site especially the new database prior to completing the next step.
Make a FULL backup of your previous database and your previous site again... yes..again.
Export the following fourteen (14) tables from your previous (live) site database that is now in offline mode using a tool such as Navicat or PHPMyAdmin.
sitestorepro_contact_responses, sitestorepro_discounts, sitestorepro_order_payments_php, sitestorepro_order_refunds, sitestorepro_orderdetails, sitestorepro_orders, sitestorepro_prod_activations, sitestorepro_products_inventory_levels, sitestorepro_shopping_cart_log_php, sitestorepro_users, sitestorepro_user_fields, sitestorepro_prod_download_log, sitestorepro_users_login_history, sitestorepro_users_wishlists
Import ONLY the above listed tables and data into your new database using a tool such as NaviCat or PHPMyAdmin.
Delete the /sitestorepro/, /estore_admin/, folders on the previous install directory
Upload (or move) the entire development site from it's directory to the root of your previous install so that it overwrites any content with matching names in the folders.
Recommend creating a NEW database on the live server instead of simply overwriting the old database (it's just another safeguard)
Export (Backup) your development database with the all the 14 tables that you imported above.
Import that database into the NEW database you created on the live server
Change the DB login credentials in /Connections/SiteStoreProDB.php to the new login credentials for the newly created LIVE database
Login to /estore_admin/ on the LIVE server that you just copied all the date to from the development server.
Go to Setup > Checkout URL and Change the Checkout URl to the Live site URL
Go to Setup > Store URL and Change the URL from the Development URL back to the Live site URL and then turn the store back on to LIVE mode.

Your live site should now be running the new 4th generation platform with all the enhanced features, performance and security and it should contain all the products information and orders data from the previous live site.

If for some reason you notice after launching that your new site is missing some products data (i.e. you didn't duplicate the additions or edits of the products data into both databases during the development / migration process), you can fix the issue by doing the following:

(Only do the following steps if you are missing product information that was on the previous site but did not get carried over to the new install.. otherwise you are already done.)

Backup (export) all tables in the LIVE database that start with sitestorepro_cms
Export the following fourteen (14) tables from the LIVE database.
sitestorepro_contact_responses, sitestorepro_discounts, sitestorepro_order_payments_php, sitestorepro_order_refunds, sitestorepro_orderdetails, sitestorepro_orders, sitestorepro_prod_activations, sitestorepro_products_inventory_levels, sitestorepro_shopping_cart_log_php, sitestorepro_users, sitestorepro_user_fields, sitestorepro_prod_download_log, sitestorepro_users_login_history, sitestorepro_users_wishlists
Make a FULL backup of the LIVE database.
Delete all tables in the LIVE database
Import a copy of your previous database into the EMPTY live database (You should have at least two full backups of the previous database so just pick the most current one).. or if you can't find your backups or have trouble importing them, you should also still have a functional version of that database if you created a new database for the new site (.. now the second safeguard from above will make sense).
After importing the previous database into your empty NEW database, go back to /estore_admin/ and the database will be converted to the 4th generation schema again.
After you successfully login to the admin, import all the tables that you exported above that start with sitestorepro_cms as well as the 14 tables listed above.
Copy the /store_content/ folder from your final full backup of your previous site up to your new install to post up any product or store images that you added after the intial content copying.
Your install will now be fully synched up again with all the data that you missed the first time.