Best way to redirect/move a store to new URL??

Hello!

This may have not been the smartest move in the beginning, but not wanting to invest too much money in my project before knowing I was capable of setting up a store, I started up my store on a free url offered by my host. I somehow installed OpenCart on a path of this site (I'm very new to website building...), so that my store isn't on the main site but on a subdirectory.

Five months (and 1000) products later, I purchased my domain and am now trying to figure out the best way to get my store moved onto the custom domain. Ideally, I just need to transfer the whole store over (I don't have checkout or shipping set up): is it better to open up a second store under the "add new store" tab (in admin) or is it possible to change the url of my default store? Both stores have the same host (under CPanel), but I'm not exactly sure what would be the most painless option??

The current store:
http://studiospark.byethost33.com/upload/

New domain:
http://happyhamper.ca

Thank you very much for your help!!

Just point your domain to the opencart folder in cpanel and change both config.php and admin/config.php files.
If you have some hardcoded links in the scripts or content change them accordingly.

Hi Agatha!

Thank you very much for your reply!

I'm not exactly sure what pointing the domain to the store folder means, though. (I'm so sorry; I must sound very stupid... this is my first time doing all of this) I have already pointed my domain to my host so that I now have an empty folder on my cpanel file manager.

On Cpanel, I'm able to redirect the main free page (http://studiospark.byethost33.com) to my domain under the "redirects" icon, but not the path /upload. I did try to redirect, but I still get a blank page on my domain and I'm unable to access my store's admin area.

Any help (at beginner's level) would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks again!

Hi,

It sounds like your add on domain is already created in cPanel. If so, you'll want to move all of your files over from their current location to the new folder created after adding the add on domain. Make sure .htaccess.txt or .htaccess (if you modified that) is moved over as well.

As mentioned before, you'll need to edit both of your config files in the HTTP, HTTPS and DIR sections.

You should be all set after this unless you've hard coded any links.

If you run into trouble, feel free to reply here or send an email - websitedesign@evolvewebhost.com

Hi,

Thank you very much for your reply and some clarification! I copy and pasted all folders and files from the /upload folder to the empty /htdocs folder in my add-on domain folder. Then, I went in to config.php and admin/config.php and edited the URLs in the HTTP and HTTPS sections. I'm not quite sure how to go about changing the DIR. Do I include all the previous hosting information? The previous information read (where b33_15711659 is my username on the host server):
I simply added in my new domain folder directory:
But when I click on my domain URL, I get a blank screen (versus the "/index directory" that was showing up before). Have I screwed up the directories? Or do I need to wait a little longer for things to work?

Also, this is probably an even dumber question: how do I access my store's admin panel once everything is copy and pasted? My old admin panel is under /admin.index.php so I tried accessing it under the same path in my new domain (that is: happyhamper.ca/admin/index.php) and I'm getting... a blank screen.

Thanks again for your (or anyone else's help) and I'm sorry for sounding like such an idiot.

Hi,

It's the same hosting company, right? You would only need to update the paths in the DIR section to include the name of the folder for your add on domain.

To access the admin screen, you can just type in domain.com/admin if everything else is setup properly.

Also, make sure your nameservers are updated for the new domain as well.

Hi!

It works! The blank screen turned out to be my fault: I added in the domain name to change the DIR, but forgot to take out the /upload from the original store, so I deleted all those "uploads" and both the store and the admin area seem to be working perfectly. As far as I know, I don't recall having any hardcoded links anywhere but in case I come across any, I know how to change that. Thank you so much for your help!! This certainly beat having to open up a second store and manually transfer over all those products and categories! Thanks again!