I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas or suggestions for me on proceeding with a planned upgrade. Currently I'm running aMember version 3 on a shared server. About a year ago I started using a dedicated server and the time has come to upgrade the aMember 3 site and move it to the dedicated server. The problem is that I have over 1,000 active users still accessing the site daily. While I can develop certain parts of the new site without moving it to the new server, I can't properly setup aMember and a few other components without doing so. Which brings me to my question. Does anyone have any advice for upgrading to aMember version 4 AND moving my site to a new dedicated server with minimal downtime? I thought about setting up a temporary private domain on my dedicated server and developing it there, but I'm fairly certain the file and folder protection (among other items) in aMember won't carry over to the new domain, which means I would need to redo all those settings and more. I think that aMember allows for domain changes within it's software, but I'm more concerned with paths and security. ANY advice or hints would be appreciated. I'm sure I can't be the only person that has gone through this on this software. Thanks!
I recommend to split this process in two steps. 1. Move aMember v3 to new server and make it working first. Just create mirror of your site on dedicated server and configure protection etc.. Then when everything is tested, you just need to copy database from old server and switch DNS records 2. Then upgrade when you be sure that everything is correct.
I was thinking the same thing. My only worry on this is protection and folder paths. I have about 75 "products" setup in my system, each one using at least 1 level of the "new_rewrite" protection method. Do you have any ideas on that? I'm thinking I am probably going to need to remove all the protection settings before I transfer the site and then set them back up once I have everything moved. Does that sound like the best method? And what about the folder paths (throughout aMember, not just folder protections)? I know that my product links force me to use the FULL unix server path, which of course will be very different between the servers, so what would be the best way about correcting all of that?
Well if you have your own dedicated server, you Shoul have access to system configs so you can keep the same folder structure as before Or even without config modifications, create unix link from old path to new one. For example if you had amember in /home/user/www/amember on old server and now you have it in /var/www/amember just create symlink /home/user/www which will point to /var/www that way all your previous paths will work( just make sure that permissions for each folder inside that path are good for apache)
Excellent idea - I do have a dedicated server so I will look into how exactly I get that setup as that would solve a LOT of problems. Thanks!