This tutorial will show explain how to migrate a ZenCart shop from one host to another host. This might be necessary when moving to another web host. Or you may want to make a "clone" of a production live shop on a development test server for testing and development work.
"Cloning" is essentially the same a "migrating" except you do not delete the store from the old host.
In either case, to set up a new shop on a new host with all the information and look-and-feel of the old shop on the old host, take a look at this ZenCart article.
The thing you have to remember is that you never overwrite the two configure files that are on the servers. The config files belong to the server in which they were created; they do not move from one server to another. The two configure files are includes/configure.php and admin/includes/configure.php.
If Cloning on a Development Server
Remember that your new host will have all the same database values of your old host. If you are cloning the shop for testing purposes, remember to change the admin email and also the order email notifications of the development shop to your own. And also uninstall all the payment modules on the development shop so that visitors do not accidentally happen upon it and try to buy something.
Testing and Possible Errors
You need to test thoroughly the new shop after the migration, especially going through the checkout process and make a real purchase. Sometimes it may look fine, but have problem in a few pages. If you get warnings like "header already sent", see this thread about possible file corruption. Sometime due to the heavy file transferring back and forth or via webhost web editors, some extra lines or space may got added or deleted. Also check the two config files for that and possible missing PHP end tags.
General Steps for Migrating ZenCart
1. Note the IP addresses of the old host and new host. Sometimes when switching domain name servers, you may need to access the site via the IP.
2. Turn on "Down for Maintenance" for the shop on the old host.
3. Backup the file system and the database on the old host.
4. Setup database in the new host and install default ZenCart of the same version of your shop on the new host. And also use the same database prefix. This gets the installer to write out the two config files correctly on your new host. Test the default ZenCart shop on the new host.
5. Delete all the ZenCart files on the new host, EXCEPT for the two config files. Then copy all the ZenCart files from the old host to the new host, EXCEPT for the two config files.
6. If you had renamed your admin folder as you should have as explained here, then move the admin/includes/configure.php file to the same location in your in renamed admin folder. Edit this configure.php file according to the above link to have path referencing your renamed admin folder.
7. Set the two configure files to be permission 444.
8. Set the directories that is specified in the ZenCart install instructions to 777.
9. Drop all tables of the ZenCart database on the new host. Then import the SQL database file of the old host to the new database on the new host.
10. Run the Fix Cache Key utility
11. Set the new server path of your new host in ZenCart Admin -> Configuration -> Logging.
12. Turn on your new shop and test. If all goes well, do a full-backup. You don't want to lose all the hard work done in the migration.
13. If doing a migration (instead of a clone), delete the ZenCart files and database on the old host. Make sure you are not deleting the ZenCart on your new host. You may need to access the old host via the IP address. If doing a DNS name server change, you may also want to look into the mail system to see if any emails had fallen through the crack during the switchover.
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