How to move your website from one domain to another with Zen Cart ?

Zen Cart is an open source ecommerce software that is available for free download. This software is very popular ecommerce platform that has been around for a while and trusted and implemented by many companies as their ecommerce Web solution. The Zen Cart has evolved over the years to become a very robust and versatile software. It is usually the case that the Zen Cart users like to have their own design for their store front. It is easy to install a Zen Cart with a ready made template by simply following the instructions (if you are good at doing so), however making your own customized template is another ball game altogether. It requires the expert hands of a web designer to make a good design suitable for shopping cart. Besides which it also takes the expertise of an ecommerce web developer to actually integrate the web design into the Zen Cart along with all the customizations that would be required. Alakmalak is one such e commerce web development company that can help you out with such issues.

Zen Cart Web DevelopmentSuch websites are first made for you to test and are placed on a test server and not directly on the main web address. For example if the URL of your store is http://www.mystore.com, the website being built will be first placed on a temporary URL and not on your store URL. After the website is fully completed and the tests have been made the website is transferred to the main URL. This article describes how you can transfer the website from one domain to another keeping everything intact.

Zen Cart Web Development ServicesThe first thing to do when transferring the website is to compress the website files by selecting all the files and then using the compress option. It is also required to export the database to a file so that it can be transferred to the main website.

Ecommerce Website DevelopmentOnce the backup has been made on the existing website you need to copy the compressed file onto the new website or main website via FTP. As for the database considering the new website has a cPanel, you need to go to the cPanel and create a new database by entering the name, user and password of the database. Once that is done you need to import the database from the existing website to the new website.

Ecommerce Website Design ServicesOnce the compressed files have been uploaded, you need to uncompress the files in the relevant directory and begin to configure the website. The configuration files of the website can be located in the store directory like includes/configure.php and admin/includes/configure.php . These files are not identical however similar data needs to be entered in to both the files. The following changes need to be made these files.

1. Change the value of the HTTP_SERVER like below:

a. define(‘HTTP_SERVER’, ‘http://yourdomain.com’);

2. Change the value of DIR_WS_CATALOG giving path of the catalog

a. define(‘DIR_WS_CATALOG’, ‘/shop/’);

3. Change the value of DIR_FS_CATALOG giving the full path of the catalog like:

a. define(‘DIR_FS_CATALOG’, ‘/home/user/public_html/shop’);

4. Change the value of DB_SERVER which will usually be localhost

a. define(‘DB_SERVER’, ‘localhost’);

5. Change the values of DB_SERVER_USERNAME, DB_SERVER_PASSWORD, and DB_DATABASE to the values of the newly created database on the new server using the define directive.

Thus the process of transferring a Zen Cart website is quite simple though often does result coming up with the error screen. The common errors when that occurs are like not assigning any user to the database, or forgetting to change one of the 5 parameters mentioned above. Hence if you follow all the instructions to the point then there will be no trouble in transferring the Zen Cart website to a new host or the main host.

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