I think I'm about to purchase Cs-cart. I've been playing around with the free version for a bit and am happy with what I see so far.
Was wondering if I could get any tips about the migration process. I'll be switching over from an old cre-loaded/oscommerce store.
Can anyone with experience in this offer up an order in which to do things? I'd like to make this as pain free as possible. I'm hoping to avoid forgetting something major and then having to restart the whole process.
How does is work with the images on your current site? Do they get copied to folders on new site or do they stay in the same spot and receive a new link? I'm thinking to move to new server as well for this relaunch. I'm unclear as to how this works with doing it yourself or using that cart2cart service.
Thanks,
Do it the Cart2Cart way, it'll work out much cheaper than doing it all yourself (time=money). They had a few bugs in their transfer process for Interspire to CS-Cart, which we resolved, and the transfer was complete in less than a day, with a few weeks afterwards spent cleaning up, ensuring various data was migrated properly and making changes to CS-Cart which were not applicable for the previous software used. I would expect at least 10 times as much work if I did the entire transfer manually.
[quote name='StellarBytes' timestamp='1327779328' post='130149']
Do it the Cart2Cart way, it'll work out much cheaper than doing it all yourself (time=money). They had a few bugs in their transfer process for Interspire to CS-Cart, which we resolved, and the transfer was complete in less than a day, with a few weeks afterwards spent cleaning up, ensuring various data was migrated properly and making changes to CS-Cart which were not applicable for the previous software used. I would expect at least 10 times as much work if I did the entire transfer manually.
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Did you import customers too? So when you went live with the Cs-cart store you, what did you do about the customers who signed up and the transaction from the weeks where you were tweaking the cart2cart transfer?
Cart2Cart works really good. It imports all of your products, categories, user, order, etc. Basically your entire OSCommerce store onto CS-Cart.
As for people who sign up and/or place orders, you would need to manually input these things into your new CS-Cart install. It is definitely best to get your design and everything else you need done to your CS-Cart install before you do the Cart2Cart thing. Once you do the move, you'd probably want to do a couple of days worth of testing, but unless you get 1,000 new people/orders per day, manually inputting this information shouldn't be too bad.
Oh, and don't forget to do all of you 301 redirects.
Hope that helps,
Brandon
[quote name='brandonvd' timestamp='1327780835' post='130152']
Cart2Cart works really good. It imports all of your products, categories, user, order, etc. Basically your entire OSCommerce store onto CS-Cart.
As for people who sign up and/or place orders, you would need to manually input these things into your new CS-Cart install. It is definitely best to get your design and everything else you need done to your CS-Cart install before you do the Cart2Cart thing. Once you do the move, you'd probably want to do a couple of days worth of testing, but unless you get 1,000 new people/orders per day, manually inputting this information shouldn't be too bad.
Oh, and don't forget to do all of you 301 redirects.
Hope that helps,
Brandon
[/quote]
How does the image transfer thing work?
And, I'm thinking about reconfiguring my categories and sub-categories. Doesn't seem like that would be too hard in Cs-cart, just move everything before deleting anything.
I have 6000 products, using the old urls like…–> product_info.php?products_id=600
How do I go about doing these 301 redirects?
I did the move for a client a couple of months ago, so I'm trying to remember what I did, sorry.
If I remember correctly, I did a fresh install of CS-Cart and then put the Cart2Cart thing on both sites. Then I ran Cart2Cart and it transferred everything over. I think it had trouble with some of my images, but only like 130 out of like 20,000, so not too bad.
The biggest annoyance of the move was that it imported in the thumbnails as thumbnails instead of just the detailed image, but this really isn't a big deal.
The other problem we had was that a lot of the images were the same. Since CS-Cart doesn't allow that, some of the image names got changed to some crazy number and some were broke. There is actually a section of code that makes the cart do this and so if you have a bunch of products with the same image, I'd comment this out first. Then the cart will use the same image.
As for the redirects, I used his Google Base feed to get all of the URLs. Then I used Excel to change everything and make my redirects. Since the product codes and URL's were there, it was pretty easy. We did have a problem with the category redirects though and a lot of those had to be done manually. Just to redirect your products is pretty easy.
The nice thing about the redirects is that you can turn on the SEO addon so that you get the nice SEO names, then you are redirecting all of your URLs to a nice new name.
Hopefully that helps a bit more.
Brandon
Doesn't sound too bad. So, I should probably do the cart2cart thing first then. After I get all the products arranged, broken images fixed, etc…then work on my templates and installing addons? THen when it's ready just transfer to live server and I'm done? Is there anything I won't be able to setup correctly on the test server before I go live under the correct domain/server? Like the SSL for example?
THanks for all the tips!
I'd do the design first. I do all of my designing with just the demo cart, so your products shouldn't matter. Addons are just addons, they they shouldn't make a difference.
I guess it really depends on how busy your store is. If you only get one sale a day, it probably isn't a big deal to manually input them. If you get 100 per day, it becomes much harder.
Depending on how you have the dev site set up, you might even be able to use your SSL. For example.
If you have your site currently at http://www.your-domain.com and your SSL is at https://www.your-domain.com then you can make your dev site http://www.your-domain.com/dev and your SSL and everything will work just fine. Then when you are done with the dev site, you backup your current site and just move everything from the dev folder into the root. If you use the file manager in cPanel, this is super easy and quick. From there, you just change your .htaccess file and your config.local.php file and you are good to go. This is the definitely the best way that I've found to set up a site.
Thanks,
Brandon
[quote name='brandonvd' timestamp='1327791328' post='130160']
I'd do the design first. I do all of my designing with just the demo cart, so your products shouldn't matter. Addons are just addons, they they shouldn't make a difference.
I guess it really depends on how busy your store is. If you only get one sale a day, it probably isn't a big deal to manually input them. If you get 100 per day, it becomes much harder.
Depending on how you have the dev site set up, you might even be able to use your SSL. For example.
If you have your site currently at http://www.your-domain.com and your SSL is at https://www.your-domain.com then you can make your dev site [url=“http://www.your-domain.com/dev”]http://www.your-domain.com/dev[/url] and your SSL and everything will work just fine. Then when you are done with the dev site, you backup your current site and just move everything from the dev folder into the root. If you use the file manager in cPanel, this is super easy and quick. From there, you just change your .htaccess file and your config.local.php file and you are good to go. This is the definitely the best way that I've found to set up a site.
Thanks,
Brandon
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I'm on a dedicated server that I have divided up into a few VPS and I have my dev site on a different vps from my live shop. I like to keep my live shop all by itself. To complicate matters, I'm seeking to move to a better dedicated server as well, mine is like 6 years old and pretty dated by today's standards.
I thought I read somewhere on there that when you upgrade from free version to paid version it overwrites everything so any changes you made get erased. So, seems to me I have to upgrade to paid version or start from scratch with paid version and then start workin on the templates and addons and whatnot. That right?
I have no clue about the free version to Pro version, sorry. Seems kind of silly to me to wipe out all of the data just to upgrade, but maybe that is just me.
Personally, this is what I'd do:
1.) Figure out your hosting issues
2.) Download the Pro trial ( you get like 30 days or something before it starts warning you)
3.) Install any addons
4.) Do any design changes
5.) Once the site looks the way you want, do a backup and then import in your OSCommerce stuff
6.) Test it and add orders, etc. while you go
7.) Once you are happy with it, move it over to your live store
8.) Purchase a license with CS-Cart
If you can do all that within 30 days, you essentially get the cart for 13 months instead of 12 before you have to worry about renewing your license for the upgrades. (Yes, I'm a cheap ass)
Others might have a different order, but this seems about right to me.
Oh, how much have you been playing around with the free version? One thing about it, I think Cart2Cart overwrites any products, orders and users, so if you have a bunch of stuff in the free version, it is just going to be overwritten anyways. Because of this, I'd just start from scratch with a trial version of the Pro.
Hope that helps,
Brandon
[quote name='brandonvd' timestamp='1327795537' post='130162']
I have no clue about the free version to Pro version, sorry. Seems kind of silly to me to wipe out all of the data just to upgrade, but maybe that is just me.
Personally, this is what I'd do:
1.) Figure out your hosting issues
2.) Download the Pro trial ( you get like 30 days or something before it starts warning you)
3.) Install any addons
4.) Do any design changes
5.) Once the site looks the way you want, do a backup and then import in your OSCommerce stuff
6.) Test it and add orders, etc. while you go
7.) Once you are happy with it, move it over to your live store
8.) Purchase a license with CS-Cart
If you can do all that within 30 days, you essentially get the cart for 13 months instead of 12 before you have to worry about renewing your license for the upgrades. (Yes, I'm a cheap ass)
Others might have a different order, but this seems about right to me.
Oh, how much have you been playing around with the free version? One thing about it, I think Cart2Cart overwrites any products, orders and users, so if you have a bunch of stuff in the free version, it is just going to be overwritten anyways. Because of this, I'd just start from scratch with a trial version of the Pro.
Hope that helps,
Brandon
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Thanks! Sounds perfect!
Ok, here’s what I did.
I downloaded CS-Cart Professional and installed on domain.com.
I created the template, installed add-ons, modified the store until it was ready to become the ‘production site’.
I then had Cart2Cart transfer all the data (orders, customers and products) to the CS-Cart installation. For a few weeks, with the aid of Cart2Cart, resolved data conflicts between the two. Cart2Cart are now able to migrate products and it’s options/variants from Interspire, which caused a few problems initially but were resolved eventually. Note, the only thing Cart2Cart cannot transfer is pages (ie. Website Content > Pages), which isn’t difficult to do, virtually a copy/paste scenario and customer account passwords.
To resolve this, I created a newsletter, informing customers of a) our new site launch, 
how to reset their passwords to create a new password and c) a few special offers for sticking with us.
I then had CS-Cart resolve any issues I found on the development site, so once these were resolved, the site was ready to go live. The day before launch day, I paid Cart2Cart to transfer some products which had ben added/removed since the initial migration as well as all customers and their orders.
On the launch day, I tar’d (ie. compressed via command line) the entire CS-Cart install, did a backup of the live store and then closed the live store (Interspire store), transferred the tar file then unpacked it (all via command live, easy to do, much more efficient than FTP’ing everything and most importantly, keeps the same file/folder permissions intact) to the live site. I did a backup of the .com database, imported it into a new database on .co.uk, then did a find/replace on the database, which would replace all .com URL’s for .co.uk, thus, all page links, image links, etc, were all amended properly for the live site.
Edited the config files and that was that, the new site was live within the hour. Any orders placed within the hour were transferred manually, then the ‘New Site Launch’ newsletter campaign was distributed. Ran into a few redirect issues, which CS-Cart and a few forum members chipped in to resolve. Virtually a flawless migration…
Good luck, feel free to get in touch if you need any further advice.
Yep, that sounds about right.
I'm not sure about Interspire since my client used OSCommerce, but Cart2Cart was able to move all of the users and their passwords from his OSCommerce store to his new CS-Cart store.
How did you handle the new customers? I see that you said that you had Cart2Cart move the new ones over, but did you just pay attention to the last customer ID and then just had them move over the new ones? So, the last one of the initial transfer was 1000 and after your testing, it was 1100. Were they able to transfer the 100?
Thanks,
Brandon
When you purchase the license it says you have to tell them the domain name it's going to be used for, however, my test site is under a different domain. I assume everyone developing does the same thing. After it's setup as you guys have laid out, it'll be moved to the proper domain. Does this cause any issues?
That's kind of up to CS-Cart. Personally, I'd register it to the domain you plan on using. I think the license says something about as long as the site isn't accesable to the public (store is closed) than you can develop it like you are talking about.
This is basically how it would work if you don't transfer the site within 30 days:
1.) You register the license to the domain you plan on using
2.) You install the license key on to your dev site
3.) You run it and do your modifications and stuff
4.) CS-Cart might, at some point, send you an email after the 30 day trial.
5.) You explain to them what you are doing and that the public can't see the site.
6.) They will either tell you to transfer it or give you an “extension”
After the 30 day trial, the cart starts complaining to you, but that is about it. From there it is up to CS-Cart themselves to catch you and give you a warning. Depending on how busy they are, this could take a while.
I changed a site's domain a while back for a client. I didn't even think about changing the license. I'll bet it took 45 to 60 days for CS-Cart to catch it and send out an email. I then replied back to CS-Cart what I did and they changed the stuff in their system.
Obviously this all goes out the door if you push CS-Cart too far and are dishonest about things. So far, you don't seem like you are trying to cheat anyone, so I doubt this will be a problem.
Just be sure that the store remains closed and you won't have any problems.
Brandon
[quote name='brandonvd' timestamp='1327873200' post='130187']
That's kind of up to CS-Cart. Personally, I'd register it to the domain you plan on using. I think the license says something about as long as the site isn't accesable to the public (store is closed) than you can develop it like you are talking about.
This is basically how it would work if you don't transfer the site within 30 days:
1.) You register the license to the domain you plan on using
2.) You install the license key on to your dev site
3.) You run it and do your modifications and stuff
4.) CS-Cart might, at some point, send you an email after the 30 day trial.
5.) You explain to them what you are doing and that the public can't see the site.
6.) They will either tell you to transfer it or give you an “extension”
After the 30 day trial, the cart starts complaining to you, but that is about it. From there it is up to CS-Cart themselves to catch you and give you a warning. Depending on how busy they are, this could take a while.
I changed a site's domain a while back for a client. I didn't even think about changing the license. I'll bet it took 45 to 60 days for CS-Cart to catch it and send out an email. I then replied back to CS-Cart what I did and they changed the stuff in their system.
Obviously this all goes out the door if you push CS-Cart too far and are dishonest about things. So far, you don't seem like you are trying to cheat anyone, so I doubt this will be a problem.
Just be sure that the store remains closed and you won't have any problems.
Brandon
[/quote]
Yes, I'm not a developer. I'm just a guy who likes to do everthing himself. Sounds good, just didn't have any idea how strictly this was enforced. I doubt I'll be ready to move in 30 days though, more like 60 probably.
It's going to take me some time to re-learn some of this stuff and get more familiar with the cs-cart workings. Just setting up taxes wasn't so obvious and took some time. I can see that trying to configure all my shipping rates/custom ones is going to take some trial and error as well. And this is just the backend stuff, not mention of the under the hood code changes and getting the hang of “hooks” so I can do things right. I was considering having a template done, but I think I can probably mod one of the templates that come stock enough for my liking…we'll see. I haven't seen any suitable pre-made templates so it'd have to be a custom job anyhow.
I would have asked them some of this direct, but I see the help chat thing is offline on the weekend and I'm guess I'm excited about getting things going.
CS-Cart is also in Russia, so depending on where you are at, there can be a serious delay in getting answers. This forum is definitely the best place to get answers fairly quickly.
There is a ton of knowledge here on the forum and as long as you remain cool with people, you shouldn't have any problems getting answers.
The hooks are definitely the way to go. It makes upgrades so much easier to do. You definitely won't regret learning how to hook things correctly.
Brandon
[quote name='brandonvd' timestamp='1327880423' post='130193']
CS-Cart is also in Russia, so depending on where you are at, there can be a serious delay in getting answers. This forum is definitely the best place to get answers fairly quickly.
There is a ton of knowledge here on the forum and as long as you remain cool with people, you shouldn't have any problems getting answers.
The hooks are definitely the way to go. It makes upgrades so much easier to do. You definitely won't regret learning how to hook things correctly.
Brandon
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Yes, I MUST learn the hook system. I read some of the linked pages people have posted already, it seems pretty straightforward. I'm sort of in that predicament with my current shop, since it's a modified version of osc (cre-loaded), I forgot how to implement osc addons, since it's been about 4 years since I've done any of it and there's all these extra steps and pages you have to modify to make it work. Never doing any of that again without making a notebook of all my changes…ugh.
[quote name='brandonvd' timestamp='1327857446' post='130174']
How did you handle the new customers? I see that you said that you had Cart2Cart move the new ones over, but did you just pay attention to the last customer ID and then just had them move over the new ones? So, the last one of the initial transfer was 1000 and after your testing, it was 1100. Were they able to transfer the 100?
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Yes, that is exactly what happened. The only reason Cart2Cart didn't customer account passwords was because Interspire stores them using an MD5 hash, which in theory could have been decoded and migrated, however, I guess they might have worries with data protection laws.
Also, I bought the license for .co.uk and submitted a ticket stating my intention to develop on .com (using trial), for approximately 4-6 weeks. CS-Cart happily extended the trial license for an extra 30 days until I was ready to transfer and go live on .co.uk.
So, I loaded up the trial version of Pro and wow…this thing crawls to the point it’s completely unusable as in 15 sec load times. I loaded the demo products during the install just to see how it would perform. The free version was working fine, but I guess this Pro version is loaded up with enough stuff (products/addons) to make my old dedicated server gasp for air. Pretty disappointing, as I was getting love the admin area. Probably going to move to a new dedicated server in a week or so and test it on there. It gets 76/81 on gtmetrix but the load times are atrocious. 