Upgrade Contents and Orders Only ?

[Mike Hughes]

Is there any way of upgrading a site to V8 that will only take in the content and orders from the old site?

I have a heavily customised site in V6.1.5 that I want to upgrade to V8 and will happily transfer it to a clean V8 theme if possible. The only problem is that importing the V6 snapshot seems to work well for everything except the design. At the moment it takes V8 some 2-3 hours to convert the design when doing an import and the same amount of time to open the site again after saving. I'm in the process of changing the theme for each section to a V8 one but each section is taking 30-40 minutes to apply the changes.

I'll report all this in an email once I have the full story, but I was wondering if there's an easier way to do this? It would be nice if there was an option when importing the snapshot to just import the orders and content to an existing theme but I can't seem to find a way of doing this.

Mike

[pinbrook]

I have been experimenting with just taking an export and thus hierarcical import, I've not worked in this since the weekend through

[jont]

It would be nice if there was an option when importing the snapshot to just import the orders and content to an existing theme

If that was a tick box option upon import it would be a fantastic addition and save hours upon hours of conversion issues, thread posts and support calls.

It gets my vote.

[Duncan Rounding]

Ditto - great idea.

[cdicken]

HI all - I have passed on this suggestion to the team.

Meanwhile there is a workaround, which is to supply an export file with the snaoshot you send your customers.

Get the customer to import the import file - and then get them to import the snapshot - but elect to only override orders.

[Mike Hughes]

Hi Chris,

and then get them to import the snapshot - but elect to only override orders.

Unless I'm mistaken this will still import the theme, templates, etc for the snapshot. There doesn't seem to be a way of importing just the content and orders.

Mike

[cdicken]

Yep - good point. I'll feed this back.

[cbarling]

As a hack, couldn't you apply a standard v7 theme to your customised v7 installation (obviously after fully backing up etc), then import this into v8?

Chris

[RuralWeb]

As a hack, couldn't you apply a standard v7 theme to your customised v7 installation (obviously after fully backing up etc), then import this into v8?

I have been working on this over the weekend and have come to the same conclusion ie convert to a standard V7 theme and then upgrade. Having exchanged emails with Toby at Actinic on the subject it does not appear possible to do any sort of content/order import without the upgrade affecting the theme.

[RuralWeb]

apply a standard v7 theme to your customised v7 installation (obviously after fully backing up etc), then import this into v8?

It works! :D by applying the theme to the V7 site it wipes out the customisation. If you then create a snapshot and import into a V8 theme then everything works perfectly.

This is the way I think I will tackle upgrading sites rather than spending time trying to fix any errors I will simply make them a V8 Theme site and build from there.

[pinbrook]

This is the way I think I will tackle upgrading sites rather than spending time trying to fix any errors I will simply make them a V8 Theme site and build from there.

To be honest that has always been the best way to go - especially if you are a developer.

The upgrade route is a good solution for self builders who don't want to re-do the customisation.

Shame really as I know Actinic have put a lot of hard work into the upgrader.

[RuralWeb]

Shame really as I know Actinic have put a lot of hard work into the upgrader
I was trying to avoid the complete redesign route as it initially looked like the sites I had upgraded had worked ok. It was only when I tried to add the best seller feed to the outer layer that I found the problems.

Like you I have always thought that the start from scratch theory is best BUT I sometimes miss a trick and so I wanted to try every option before going for the complete redesign plan.

I just need to get the outer layer into DW now:) have you managed it ?

[pinbrook]

I just need to get the outer layer into DW now have you managed it ?

I've not looked the design side of V8 since last weekend.

To many other things to do (sadly!) and waiting for a new beta with better integration

[RuralWeb]

waiting for a new beta with better integration I have stopped all design work with V7. I feel its not worth begining a design job knowing what I know about upgrading to V8. Its better to wait and not have to do the job twice.

[Mike Hughes]

I've tried to import my V6 site into V8 every which way but without any success. V8 seems to have severe difficulties converting the templates into layouts, even when I've over-ridden my templates with a standard V6 theme.

In this respect beta2 is worse than beta1 as at least beta1 would sometimes complete (after several hours) and then be stable until you tried to re-open V8 and it would just hang. With beta2 it's not stable after the upgrade and you get the same hanging when you try to re-open.

As I said at the start of this thread. An option to import the orders and content only into a clean start layout would sidestep all this mucking about and make everone's life much easier.

I have reported this by email.

Mike

[RuralWeb]

An option to import the orders and content only into a clean start layout would sidestep all this mucking about and make everone's life much easier Agreed - this must be a simple option to add to V8???

[wesleythorne]

this feature would be good
Wesley

[cdicken]

Thanks for all your comments. I will pass these to the development team - but I don't think we can add any new functionality in in time for v8.

[Mike Hughes]

This should be a very simple change and shouldn't really involve new functionality. From what I can see actinic already does it during an upgrade, i.e. upgrades the database and copies in the content, before going on doing it's other stuff.

All that's really needed is to remove the steps that involve checking the theme, converting customvars to variables, mapping templates to layouts, etc.

I know nothing is ever this easy, as the scripts still need to be upgraded, but I'm sure development will agree that this is actually pretty much just removing some steps from the full upgrade process.

Mike

[jont]

I know nothing is ever this easy, as the scripts still need to be upgraded, but I'm sure development will agree that this is actually pretty much just removing some steps from the full upgrade process.

That was my thinking as a lay-man in the world of programming. Let Actinic keep all the user entered info from the database and replace everything else with a default factory setting.

If not available via Actinic maybe someone like Jan or Bill could create a suitable program to facilitate this?