DISCLAIMER
The following is an individual experience of upgrading a Kartris installation on a Staging server on aprivate IP address and should not beheld as a definitive guide covering every Kartris installation running atV1.3003!
Environment
- VMWare Server 2.0 VM
- Windows 2003 Server, SP2
- IIS 6.0
- SQL Server 2008
The beauty of running the staging server on a VM is that you can take a snapshot before every change and rollback if it all goes t**s-up!
The first thing to do was to bring up the database to the maximum version level under V1.3 which meant bringing it up to V1.3008.
The folder containing the DB upgrade scripts to do this job is called ‘Resources’, located in the path ‘Kartris\Uploads\Resources’. The following is a sequence of events running each of the upgrade scripts. I achieved this using the free MS SQL Server 2008 Management Studio and connecting directly to the database.
1.3003-1.3004
Completed with no errors so I upgraded my live server (for God’s sake,back up your live DB before you do this!)
1.3004-1.3006
Completed with the following errors:
Msg 2714, Level 16, State 3, Procedure vKartrisCombinationPrices, Line4
There is already an object named 'vKartrisCombinationPrices' in thedatabase.
Msg 15233, Level 16, State 1, Procedure sp_addextendedproperty, Line 37
Property cannot be added. Property 'MS_DiagramPane1' already exists for'dbo.vKartrisCombinationPrices'.
Msg 15233, Level 16, State 1, Procedure sp_addextendedproperty, Line 37
Property cannot be added. Property 'MS_DiagramPaneCount' already existsfor 'dbo.vKartrisCombinationPrices'.
Msg 2714, Level 16, State 3, ProcedurespKartrisVersions_GetCombinationVersionID_s, Line 37
There is already an object named 'spKartrisVersions_GetCombinationVersionID_s'in the database.
However, these are expected 'errors' as the tables in question were already there so not really errors. All was working anyway so I carried out the upgrade on the live server with near identical ‘error’ messages.
1.3006 to 1.3007
Completed with no errors so I upgraded my live server
1.3007 to 1.3008
Completed with the following errors:
Msg 2714, Level 16, State 3, Procedure fnKartrisBasket_GetItemWeight,Line 44
There is already an object named 'fnKartrisBasket_GetItemWeight' in thedatabase.
However, this was a minor error as the object was already there in DB. All was still working so carried out on the live server with identical error.
This is where I stopped with the live server DB upgrades as the next upgrade would force the issue of replacing the Kartris script files, So carrying on with the staging server upgrade:
SQL_1.3_To_1.4.sql
Completed with the following error:
Msg 3701, Level 11, State 5, Line 1 Cannot drop the function 'fnKartrisBasket_GetItemWeight',because it does not exist or you do not have permission.
Having checked with Kartris support (we have a support contract and I highly recommend taking one out if you are a non-ASP idiot like me!) this was expected because the function did not exist in the 1.3 DB
SQL_1.4001_To_1.4002.sql
Completed without error
Now it was time to upgrade the Kartris script files which is where it got a little tricky…
First of all, I copied everything in my root Kartris installation folder into a new folder so everything was backed up.
Next I overwrote all the V1.3008files with the V1.4004 files & folders, then copied back over the folders /Uploads/Images /Skins /Plugins from my previous installation along with the old /web.config/web_menu.sitemap /web_breadcrumb.sitemap /robots.txt /favicon.ico files.
DO NOT DO THIS!
The installation failed miserably and I was back to rolling back to my previous VM snapshot (thank ye God’s for VMWare!) Here’s what worked for the Kartris script files upgrade…
- Back up the V1.3008 files.
- Delete all files and folders in the Kartris root folder so it’s empty.
- Copy all the Kartris V1,4004 files and folders into the root directory.
- Go into IIS manager on my server and change the application pool to ASP.NET 4 as 1.3 was running under ASP.NET 3.5.
- Restart the website and recycle the application pool for belt & braces purposes as sometimes bits of code get loaded in memory and if you replace the core DLL it might not match what is in memory.
- Go back to the backed up previous version and pull any custom skins out from the ‘Skins’ folder into the new ‘Skins’ folder – DO NOT PULL OVER YOUR OLD ‘Skins’ FOLDER AND OVERWRITE THE NEW ‘Skins’ FOLDER AS YOU NEED THE V1.4 ‘Admin’ FOLDER! You only need to bring over skins you have customised and need running on the new version.
- Rename the V1.4 ‘Uploads’ folder (I renamed it ‘Uploads.V1.4’) and bring back the backed up V1.3008 ‘Uploads’ folder into the new installation.
- Rename the V1.4 ‘Images’ folder and bring back the backed up V1.3008 ‘Images’ folder into the new installation.
- Rename the V1.4 ‘Plugins’ folder and bring back the backed up V1.3008 ‘Plugins’ folder into the new installation.
- Rename the V1.4 ‘web_menu.sitemap’, ‘web_breadcrumb.sitemap’, ‘robots.txt’ & ‘favicon.ico’ files and bring back the backed up V1.3008 versions into the new installation.
- Edit the new V1.4 ‘web.config’ file and replace the hashsalt value and connection strings with the ones from your backed up ‘web.config’ file.
- One more edit on the V1.4 web.config file: go to the line that says <!--<globalization resourceProviderFactoryType="SqlResourceProviderFactory" culture="auto" uiCulture="auto" enableClientBasedCulture="true"/>--> and remove the surrounding commenting-out tags can be read.
My upgraded site on my staging server was now working on a free licence. However, my live site runs on a paid licence and under HTTPS so I will no doubt have to have a V1.4 licence sent tome by Kartris
Differences In The New Site
If you use option products you will know that there is a description field in the back-end for each of the options you set up. This appears to be set up as live to display in the front-end whereas it was off by default in V1.3. The config setting is frontend.optiongroups.showdescriptionand if you don’t want to see it set the value to n.
There is a new estimated shipping facility in the shopping basket which you will need to style in CSS.
There are various minor changes in the HTML generated by the new scripts which did have an effect on my skin so there will be more CSS tweaking to do. I favour Firefox and the Firebug &Web Developer extensions which will save you absolutely heaps of time.
Anyway, this is my personal experience and I cannot vouch it will be the same for everyone. I have yet to perform the SQL V1.3-4 script updates on the live server along with the Kartris scripts as I prefer to get the skin I will be using tweaked on the staging server so it can go live immediately.
Hopefully the Kartris support guys will be able to expand on the upgrade documentation in the future or maybe achieve the Holy Grail of upgrade procedures that WordPress offers.
ADDENDUM
Problem With PNG Files Displaying
The V1.4 Index.aspx file was preventing my PNG image files from displaying on the front end (though still visible in the back end). After consultation with Kartris support I replaced the V1.4 file with my backed up V1.3008 Index.aspx file. This fixed the front-end display for PNG images.