I currently have a website, let’s call it SiteA.com, which currently resides on DomainA. I have also purchased DomainB, because CS-Cart won’t run on DomainA. What I would like to do is completely redo SiteA with CS-Cart on DomainB, and when it’s finished switch SiteA’s domain name to point to DomainB. This is going to take some time, so I don’t want to have SiteA down during this time. Also, SiteA will not work on DomainB, unfortunately.
During CS-Cart installation, it requires you to enter the server name, and for development on DomainB, it would have to be the name of the DomainB (say SiteB), but I would like to change it eventually to SiteA. Is this in any way possible?
You can change the domain name at any point. I personally set up and test my store locally on my localhost so I have my config.local.php set up like:
// Host and directory where cs-cart is installed on no-secure server
$config['http_host'] = 'localhost';
$config['http_path'] = '/saltwatertogo';
I test my site like this and then I just upload the entire thing to my server when I am ready. I then just change my config.local.php to:
// Host and directory where cs-cart is installed on no-secure server
$config['http_host'] = 'saltwatertogo.com';
$config['http_path'] = '';
I also set up all of my setting to be for saltwatertogo.com
I hope this is clear enough for you and I hope I understood what you meant.
Brandon
I notice that many of the pros tend to build & design new sites on a local pc then upload to the production server when ready to go live.
I am no pro, however, personally I prefer to design & build new sites directly on the production server of the hosting company I have already pre-chosen to use for production. I normally setup a temporary or subdomain (hidden from the public) within our web hosting account, build & test the site, then move the files to the final resting place on the server & go live.
The reasons I prefer to build on the actual hosted server is that it gives me plenty of time to experience exactly how our site will perform in real world fashion (as in essentially no surprises)! Basically I am constantly evaluating this new hosting provider’s performance all at the same time I am building our site. This is especially beneficial when switching to a host which you do not have prior history with (I recently went through this because of the need to switch from our quite familiar IIS hosting to Unix for our CS-Cart store)! You can learn quite alot about a hosting provider in the several weeks or months it takes to complete your site while continually working on it day & night! If I notice odd behavior, or unacceptable deviations in performance during this building time, it gives me plenty of time to pull the plug & switch hosts if I don’t feel totally comfortable with my choice before actually going live. 
I believe it is also far easier to setup & fully test things like payment & realtime shipping processors as well on the actual production server vs. local.
In this case you would still of course follow Brandon’s directions & adjust your settings in the config.local.php file accordingly.
This is an excellent post. I have the exact same situation as Matt!
I have an ASP shopping cart software and a Windows Host. After 9 years I am sick of both. So I purchased CS-Cart and started hosting it on CyberLNC. In order to do that I purchased another domain name and am currently importing all products and setting up the new site.
When I time comes I am really worried about:
- Switching over the domain. I assume I just point the DNS and away I go. Right?
- What changes if any do I need to make to CS-Cart? I have named everything visibly after my original domain. I just want customers to type in the old domain and have it pull up my new CS-Cart.
Based on what Struck and brandonvd are saying, I just need to change the config file.
My old store was in a sub directory www.domain.com/store. CS-Cart is not like that which I actually like. Do I need to setup redirects for Google?
Thanks for any advice as I am really nervous about making this work.
Adam
[QUOTE]1. Switching over the domain. I assume I just point the DNS and away I go. Right?[/QUOTE]
Yes, when you are ready to flip the switch, just change the DNS settings for your domain name to point to the domain where your new store resides, typically in less than 24 hours the DNS records will be updated & will take visitors to your new store when your url is entered.
[QUOTE]My old store was in a sub directory www.domain.com/store. CS-Cart is not like that which I actually like. Do I need to setup redirects for Google?[/QUOTE]
ABSOLUTELY! Spend as much time as needed learning about 301 Redirects! It appears your old store is well established & you certainly do not want to loose any of your current search engine rankings for all of your pages, nor do you want any of your existing customers to not be able to follow old page links which they may have saved as favorites, etc. Basically, you want to use 301 redirects to send search engines and visitors that click on one of your old site pages to a similar page within your new CS-Cart site. You may also consider the time of year you are making this major switch as dpending upon the type of business you have, it may be rather risky to make a change of this magnitude just as the holiday shopping season is getting into full swing, just a thought.
Again…spend however much time is needed in learning how to setup your 301 redirects as you need to redirect a load of .asp pages to .php or html pages & this is critical. My other 1 cents of advice is simply this…take your time & don’t flip the switch until you feel quite confident that your new site is ready, don’t rush it just because you may be anxious. Reason is, you already have an operational & hopefully moneymaking site up & running, so you can afford to take your time, right?
PS:Are you migrating to CS-Cart from ProductCart ? No need to reply if you would prefer not to.
Struck,
Thanks for striking up the conversation with me. I appreciate your insight. I will definitely research 301’s. I own a little known shopping cart called CandyPress. It has been a good little product, but for many reasons I am switching:
- Their community has gone downhill.
- Their company doesn’t have an open dialog with customers. They are very tight lipped about features.
- Other developers who created mods for them left for other things or have reduced the time and effort they spend on the shopping cart.
I am hosting with a company that has been really good to me, but lately they also stopped caring about my business. My ASP & MS SQL site has really slowed down. Neither the Shopping Cart or the Host is willing to assist. They keep pointing fingers with no one willing to help. I was even willing to pay money, but they were not interested.
I also wanted to integrate Google Checkout and my hosting company said they were not willing to do anything to assist even after Google told their engineers it was their server setup causing the problems.
So long story short, I am making the switch. I will keep my other 10 domains for now on my current host as they are ASP and they are not shopping carts.
Just to clarify, the 301 pages go on my CS-Cart site correct? What do I do about dynamic pages? CandyPress did this for all my pages:
Home Page: [url]http://domain.com/store/Scripts/default.asp[/url]
Category Pages: [url]http://www.domain.com/store/scripts/prodList.asp?idCategory=999[/url] (Dynamic Category Number).
Product Detail Pages: [url]http://www.domain.com/store/scripts/prodView.asp?idproduct=9999[/url] (Dynamic Category Number).
Do I have time? Yes and No. With my site really slow, I feel I am losing customers. Customers are emailing me that they cannot complete their cart because the site is so slow. I get orders, but not the amount if the site was fast. I have 16,000 products and with CS-Cart and CyberLNC, the site is faster than it has ever been.
Any other help on 301 or how to cleanly move my site over, I would appreciate the comments and help. My site is in the top 5 of all search engines for my keywords. I don’t want to hurt that in this move.
Thanks for a great product and thanks to a great community!
Adam
[QUOTE]Just to clarify, the 301 pages go on my CS-Cart site correct? What do I do about dynamic pages? CandyPress did this for all my pages:
Home Page: [url]http://domain.com/store/Scripts/default.asp[/url]
Category Pages: [url]http://www.domain.com/store/scripts/...idCategory=999[/url] (Dynamic Category Number).
Product Detail Pages: [url]http://www.domain.com/store/scripts/...idproduct=9999[/url] (Dynamic Category Number).[/QUOTE]
What we did to redirect our .asp pages to .php was add a 301 Redirect line entry within our .htaccess file on the Cs-Cart store server for each page we wanted to redirect, here is a sample to redirect the homepage:
Redirect 301 /store/index.asp [url]http://www.yournewsite/index.php[/url]
When a search engine or visitor trys to access you old page of www.oldsite.com/store/index.asp they are automatically sent to www.yournewsite/index.php
I only had to do this for approx 100 products (with a slew of variations), so you have your work cutout for you with 16,000! This is going to get tricky to say the least…and you may need to use some sort of a mod-rewrite to automatically direct all of your dynamic pages to your new site. You are most likely going to have to hire a pro my friend!
Struck,
Are you saying that I need to create a 301 redirect for each dynamic product page?
If that is the case, I have each product link from my old shipping cart Google Products feed. I could use that to start creating the 301s, right?
I just need to put the URL I want to redirect to. I could redirect to just my home page and after I submit sitemaps and the site gets crawled the links would correct themselves, right?
You said I should think about a pro. Do you have one in mind or someplace you could direct me?
Thanks for your insights.
Adam
I guess it’s just that easy! Thanks for the tip, it solved everything.
[QUOTE]Are you saying that I need to create a 301 redirect for each dynamic product page?[/QUOTE] You very well may want/need to do this, depends how important it is to you to retain whatever seo rankings you may have obtained for each individual page.
[QUOTE]If that is the case, I have each product link from my old shipping cart Google Products feed. I could use that to start creating the 301s, right?[/QUOTE]
Sure, but with 1,6000 urls to copy/paste into your .htacess file, your fingers are gonna start bleeding!
[QUOTE]I just need to put the URL I want to redirect to. I could redirect to just my home page and after I submit sitemaps and the site gets crawled the links would correct themselves, right?[/QUOTE] Sorta, however not the best idea, if the individual page you are redirecting isn’t as relevant as the page you redirected it to, then you will loose search engine ranking! If you have a page from your .asp site for blue widgets, then you should redirect that page to your blue widgets page on your CS-Cart site, because it will have similar relevance.
[QUOTE]You said I should think about a pro. Do you have one in mind or someplace you could direct me[/QUOTE]?
I really only say this because of the number of pages (in excess of 16,000) that you may want to redirect! Reason is that with this many page url’s, you will most likely want to do automatic 301 Redirects through directly on the server via Mod Rewrite. Sorry, I don’t have anyone in mind that I could send you to for this. Perhaps others on the forum has ideas/suggestions to further assist.
[quote name=‘Matt!’]I currently have a website, let’s call it SiteA.com, which currently resides on DomainA. I have also purchased DomainB, because CS-Cart won’t run on DomainA. What I would like to do is completely redo SiteA with CS-Cart on DomainB, and when it’s finished switch SiteA’s domain name to point to DomainB. This is going to take some time, so I don’t want to have SiteA down during this time. Also, SiteA will not work on DomainB, unfortunately.
During CS-Cart installation, it requires you to enter the server name, and for development on DomainB, it would have to be the name of the DomainB (say SiteB), but I would like to change it eventually to SiteA. Is this in any way possible?[/QUOTE]
Is there some particular reason you don’t just use both domains on the site?
And regarding migrating from one domain to another and migrating your entire CS-Cart —
With server access, that’s about all of 10 seconds to setup
[quote name=‘Matt!’]I currently have a website, let’s call it SiteA.com, which currently resides on DomainA. I have also purchased DomainB, because CS-Cart won’t run on DomainA. What I would like to do is completely redo SiteA with CS-Cart on DomainB, and when it’s finished switch SiteA’s domain name to point to DomainB. This is going to take some time, so I don’t want to have SiteA down during this time. Also, SiteA will not work on DomainB, unfortunately.
During CS-Cart installation, it requires you to enter the server name, and for development on DomainB, it would have to be the name of the DomainB (say SiteB), but I would like to change it eventually to SiteA. Is this in any way possible?[/QUOTE]
Are both sites hosted on same hosting?
[quote name=‘Struck’]What we did to redirect our .asp pages to .php was add a 301 Redirect line entry within our .htaccess file on the Cs-Cart store server for each page we wanted to redirect, here is a sample to redirect the homepage:
Redirect 301 /store/index.asp [url]http://www.yournewsite/index.php[/url]
[/QUOTE]
This is easy but not correct way to redirect. It should look something like that
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ./index.asp
RewriteRule ^.$ [url]http://www.domain.com/[/url] [L,R=301]
[quote name=‘jegesmaci’]Struck,
Are you saying that I need to create a 301 redirect for each dynamic product page?
If that is the case, I have each product link from my old shipping cart Google Products feed. I could use that to start creating the 301s, right?
I just need to put the URL I want to redirect to. I could redirect to just my home page and after I submit sitemaps and the site gets crawled the links would correct themselves, right?
You said I should think about a pro. Do you have one in mind or someplace you could direct me?
Thanks for your insights.
Adam[/QUOTE]
Site ranking still may go down even with proper redirects. Google will feel if the content or structure of the page has changed + all seo stuff. You need to make exact duplicate or better one.
[quote name=‘Matt!’]I currently have a website, let’s call it SiteA.com, which currently resides on DomainA. I have also purchased DomainB, because CS-Cart won’t run on DomainA. What I would like to do is completely redo SiteA with CS-Cart on DomainB, and when it’s finished switch SiteA’s domain name to point to DomainB. This is going to take some time, so I don’t want to have SiteA down during this time. Also, SiteA will not work on DomainB, unfortunately.
During CS-Cart installation, it requires you to enter the server name, and for development on DomainB, it would have to be the name of the DomainB (say SiteB), but I would like to change it eventually to SiteA. Is this in any way possible?[/QUOTE]
I had to do this exact same thing, and it wasn’t a problem.
Like you, I had a pre-existing site on Server A (which, in my case, was an ASP-based cart), which I kept running just fine while I developed my CS-Cart site on Server B.
When I first installed CS-Cart on Server B, I specified the web server by static IP address rather than by its not-yet-migrated domain name. The IP address was consequently inserted into the config.local.php file (if I recall correctly), and I accessed the Server B site via IP address in my browser.
When I wanted to switch from Server A to Server B, I edited config.local.php, and replaced the IP address with the domain name.