The 'Patch/Upgrade center' section of X-Cart allows you to upgrade your X-Cart software to newer versions via the administrative interface of your store using upgrade patchsets provided by X-Cart developers. An upgrade patchset normally contains new files, scripts and templates that appeared in the new version and need to be added to your X-Cart installation, and patch DIFF files that describe changes that need to be made to the files that already exist in your X-Cart installation so they can be used in the new version (In UNIX world DIFF files are a standard way to apply changes/fixes to the program source code). There is a special program called 'patch' that reads DIFF files and applies changes described in them to the source code.

The success of the upgrade procedure depends on how much your X-Cart has been customized. If you modified any files to which the upgrade patch should be applied, upgrade may fail. If you experience any problems with upgrading your X-Cart, we can offer you commercial manual upgrade services.

If you are going to upgrade a live store it is highly recommended to create a test copy of your store, perform the upgrade procedure on this copy, test if the upgraded store works ok, and only then apply the upgrade to your real store.

IMPORTANT! It is recommended to make a backup copy of all PHP scripts, templates and create a database dump before applying any patches. Please use Patch/Upgrade function only if you absolutely understand what you are doing.

Upgrade procedure

You can use the Patch/Upgrade center to upgrade your software to the newest versions, keeping your own X-Cart design. Using this feature you avoid installation and customization steps when upgrading.

Upgrade procedure consists of the following steps:

1. Make sure your server meets upgrade requirements. You need to have:

• Upgrade patchset
• Perl
• Ability to change file permissions by request (in fact, you need a way to access your site via SSH or FTP).

2. BACK UP YOUR STORE!

3. Upload the upgrade archive onto the server into X-Cart root folder and uncompress the archive files.

On Unix-based servers with terminal access you can do it using the following commands (depending on X-Cart version installed on your host (Gold or Pro):

> cd xcart_folder

> gunzip < x.x.x-x.x.x-gold_upgrade.tar.gz | tar -xvf -

or

> cd xcart_folder
> gunzip < x.x.x-x.x.x-pro_upgrade.tar.gz | tar -xvf -

If you have FTP access only, uncompress the upgrade archive on your local machine (for example, using WinZip) and upload the files into X-Cart folder using your FTP client.

After that you will be able to find the upgrade patch in the 'upgrade' folder.

4. Open X-Cart Patch/Upgrade center. To do that log into X-Cart administrator zone and select Patch/Upgrade in the Administration menu. If there are any problems that make using the upgrade feature impossible, the 'Patch/Upgrade center' page looks something like this:

Picture 1: Error message

There is an error message saying what is wrong. You need to correct the error before you can proceed.

If everything is OK, you see the 'Upgrade' form showing the version of currently installed X-Cart.

Picture 2: Upgrade form

If you unpacked the upgrade archive and uploaded it into X-Cart upgrade folder successfully you will see the target version number (the number of X-Cart version you can upgrade your X-Cart to) and Apply button.

To start upgrading X-Cart click on Apply.

At this point it should be noted that patch application includes two basic steps:

1) testing patch applicability;
2) applying the upgrade patch.

Revision date: 31 Jan 2006

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