Questions about switching to CC6

[avyona]

I am in the process of moving my CC3 store into a CC6 store. I have decided not to just simply "upgrade" through admin because I am using CC3 and well the databases are different. I wanted a fresh slate to work from and to test before going live. I have a few questions:

1. I have thousands of products which I have successfully imported into the new database, except for the image column. Can I FTP images to the source folder and then add then to products?  I noticed the new CC6 generates a few different versions of the images. Several sizes so to speak. I guess what I am asking is when do the extra sizes get generated?  When editing a product and assigning an image to it or during image upload in the admin? I really dont want to have to manually upload one at a time with thousands of images. Having to manually assign them to each product is going to suck already.

2. Can I also import the order tables, downloads table into cc6 and it be compatible with cc3? Right now I am seeing a few differences. IF NOT, would it be more feasible to simply make the CC3 database be pulled when a customer wants to view a past order (pre CC6). Maybe via a link in their account that reads "2009-2014 Order History" and when clicked it queries the old database. How does one do that by the way lol?  Link to another database?  What kind of php code would I need to use?

3. How exactly do code hooks work?  I usually edit the core files, although I hate doing this and would love to simple append to existing code.

4. If I wanted to offer a free mod to the CC6 database, what are the requirements?

5. Is the forgot password in the new CC6 better than CC3?  I get daily emails (10 a day at least) of customers who forgot their password and the generated one doesnt work. I have to manually reset several passwords a day using someones edit customer cc3 mod.

6. Where in the world have all the cubecart modders gone?! There are so few mods available. I'm hoping its because less are needed!

Thats all I can think of now. I'm still moving database tables over one at a time.  I DID notice that when I moved customers that the SALT column doesnt exists in CC3 as it does in CC6. I tried logging in with one of the customers from the old database and the SALT was generated so that was good news!!

[ayz1]

Im in the process of looking at doing the same thing. From what I understand the V3 and V6 databases are different so it's maybe not advisable to copy your V3 tables to the V6 database.

This is what I have done to test what happens. I installed the version of V3 I am using onto another server 3.17 im my case. I then copied the tables from my original V3 store into the new V3 copy and uploaded the images folder.

I then followed the upgrade instructions here https://support.cubecart.com/Knowledgebase/Article/View/231/43/how-do-i-upgrade-from-cubecart-v3-to-v6

All seems to have worked OK but there are issues that need addressing such as installing Payment Gateways, Shipping Module, new skin etc. Then there are issues with URL's changing, Categories etc. So although the V3 to V6 upgrade works there are a lot of other things to consider.

Hope this helps.

[bsmither]

1. You can FTP the master images to the /images/source/ folder. Then, in admin, Images, click the Update File List tab. This will load the images into the File Manager system. Once the File Manager has them, then assign the image(s) to the products. Each product can have several images associated with it. This set of associations is maintained in a different table (a 'glue' table for a many-to-many relationship between product_ids and filemanager_ids). The inventory table does not hold any information about the image associations. The requirements of the skin (as listed in the skin's config.xml file) dictate the size variants created 'on-demand' and stored in the /images/cache/ folder.

2. It is possible to import CC3 data into a CC6 table. But odds are high there will get key relationships messed up. Best to make a copy of the CC3 database and upgrade that.

There is linking to another database (seems both relatively easy but fraught with unrealized obstacles), but CubeCart allows for table prefixes. Thus, you can have CC6 create its own set of tables, perhaps prefixed by 'cc6_'. Doing that will eliminate quite a number of obstacles to having CC6 query the CC3 database. I can see small changes needed to the Database class, or use the all-purpose class method that does not care what the query is - it just executes it.

3. The statement you see in the core code about querying for hooks will execute PHP code found elsewhere. In these forums, there are discussions about creating a "code snippet". Search on "code snippet" try a few. Feel free ask questions afterwards.

4. The info I see about becoming a "seller" on the Marketplace says you need a PayPal account. There is no mention of any exceptions if everything you will want to put in there will be free. Until that gets resolved, I put all my stuff on www.cubecartforms.org.

5. I have read many reports of store owners saying the Forgot (reset) Password function in CC6 is flaky. I've been through the code dozens of times. Having done that, I've made several suggestions to make the process better, but have not found where a coding problem exists that would cause a reset password not to work. Having said that, I run my dev installs with caching disabled. There are ongoing discoveries of 'weirdness' caused by retrieving recordsets from the query cache when the query should have been sent to the database for a fresh result.

There are three types of CubeCart passwords: CC3 (no salt), CC4 (one salt), and CC5/6 (three salts with 'new_password' flag).  CC5/6 will/should detect what style the record has and update it accordingly.

6. I have no idea.

 

[ayz1]

If you ftp the images into a fresh install of v3 then do the v6 upgrade as I mentioned above then the images will show up. If you ftp them after they don't show. Some info here https://support.cubecart.com/Knowledgebase/Article/View/218/43/notes-about-upgrading-cubecart-and-resource-limits

 

[avyona]

I never even thought of moving my current modded cc3 to a fresh server and then upgrading that install...I ...feel....stupid....now

1. You can FTP the master images to the /images/source/ folder. Then, in admin, Images, click the Update File List tab. This will load the images into the File Manager system. Once the File Manager has them, then assign the image(s) to the products. Each product can have several images associated with it. This set of associations is maintained in a different table (a 'glue' table for a many-to-many relationship between product_ids and filemanager_ids). The inventory table does not hold any information about the image associations. The requirements of the skin (as listed in the skin's config.xml file) dictate the size variants created 'on-demand' and stored in the /images/cache/ folder.

2. It is possible to import CC3 data into a CC6 table. But odds are high there will get key relationships messed up. Best to make a copy of the CC3 database and upgrade that.

There is linking to another database (seems both relatively easy but fraught with unrealized obstacles), but CubeCart allows for table prefixes. Thus, you can have CC6 create its own set of tables, perhaps prefixed by 'cc6_'. Doing that will eliminate quite a number of obstacles to having CC6 query the CC3 database. I can see small changes needed to the Database class, or use the all-purpose class method that does not care what the query is - it just executes it.

3. The statement you see in the core code about querying for hooks will execute PHP code found elsewhere. In these forums, there are discussions about creating a "code snippet". Search on "code snippet" try a few. Feel free ask questions afterwards.

4. The info I see about becoming a "seller" on the Marketplace says you need a PayPal account. There is no mention of any exceptions if everything you will want to put in there will be free. Until that gets resolved, I put all my stuff on www.cubecartforms.org.

5. I have read many reports of store owners saying the Forgot (reset) Password function in CC6 is flaky. I've been through the code dozens of times. Having done that, I've made several suggestions to make the process better, but have not found where a coding problem exists that would cause a reset password not to work. Having said that, I run my dev installs with caching disabled. There are ongoing discoveries of 'weirdness' caused by retrieving recordsets from the query cache when the query should have been sent to the database for a fresh result.

There are three types of CubeCart passwords: CC3 (no salt), CC4 (one salt), and CC5/6 (three salts with 'new_password' flag).  CC5/6 will/should detect what style the record has and update it accordingly.

6. I have no idea.

 

And thank you for the clarification and the time you took to address each point