I did not do a live update, I took my time and created my 1.5.1.1 site in a test environment first. I had to do a lot of programming and database work to get this right. This is not a minor "10 minutes run a script type update", well that's my take on it.
All my data ported over except all of the options data. So all the customer order history was preserved with the exception of the options they ordered. You will lose the options in your existing orders so you will want to print any orders that you have not shipped yet. I print all my orders and file them so for me this was not an issue.
The steps I took:
- Installed a fresh version of 1.5.1.1 on my test server, We have a VPS so we created a new cPanel for it.
- Copied over my 1.4.7 database and image folder only.
- Ran Q's update and followed all his instructions to the letter.
- We manually re-entered all my options, added some attributes, basically made all the products look good on the new version.
- Modded the heck out of them look a feel and basically made navigation a hi-bred of 1.47 and 1.5.1. I also made the cat/manufacture/specials/search etc.. look like they did 1.4.7.
- Created a few mods for myself like Shop by Brand etc. got the style of how I wanted it, all the normal stuff.
- 1-5 took me about 4 weeks (not full time) and for the last two weeks, I stopped adding new products to my production site to avoid any double data entry.
- Exported customer and order data today from my prod system (customer, order, order_product, order_total, order_history).
- Import the customer/order data into my test system and then updated those tables because the tables had changed. I actually just modified Q's SQL script for those tables plus an insert into a coupon history table.
- Backed up my old site files and database. Made a second full backup.
- We copied our test site over to production. Updated config.php's, prayed a little, fixed some SSL issues, errors in the config.php, couple of "Oh crap" moments but I finally ran some test orders and it seems to be running fine. It helps to know PHP, Java, and SQL pretty well.
If you are looking to upgrade Opencart from version 2.3 to 3.0.3.1 and Journal theme 2 to 3 then go to the following link and watch the video tutorial
