Migration & Restoration from backup issue

Hi all,

First post so please be kind, I'll try to supply as much concise information as I can.

I had an online store running that I bought as a package a while ago. Hosting lapsed and I lost the site and forgot about it. I now want to revive it and found an old backup with the necessary files (I think). I've uploaded the files onto my new hosting server, and things were starting to become operational. The site worked, had admin access etc, but the theme/template wasn't working, nor product updates. As part of trying to fix it, and messing with vqmod, I've now managed to take the site offline completely. I've tried to edit files to make sure /home/olduser was changed to /home/user, but it's not helped.

When I look at the error log, I see this :
Stack trace:
#0 /home/user/website/index.php(17): require_once()
#1 {main}
thrown in /home/user/website/vqmod/vqmod.php on line 2
[19-Feb-2025 18:13:40 Europe/London] PHP Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Class "Controller" not found in /home/user/website/vqmod/vqmod.php:2

I've looked the best I can, but I can't see anything obvious wrong. My suspicion is vqmod is now not mapping properly, but I don't really know.

I'm not sure what my best option is from here, so any advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance........

It would be helpful to post your OpenCart and PHP versions. Have you compared your current files to your original backup?

Agreed, and I know how dumb this is going to sound, but how do I find out that information from the server side? I cannot load anything at the moment......

Look in the index.php and admin/index.php for the OpenCart version. Look at your hosting settings or use phpinfo() for PHP.

Just checking if you were able to retrieve the OpenCart version and PHP version of your current store.

Sorry for the delayed reply, I've set my hosting to PHP 8.0 and OC is 3.0.2

I've been messing around trying various different things I've read off of google searches, but think I may well just be making things worse....

You could compare against or restore your original backup if things are worse. When trying to work out what is wrong, check both the PHP and OpenCart error logs and you web browser's developer tool.

There is no Opencart 3.0.2
Opencart has 4 digits. So we are guessing you mean 3.0.2.0
OC 3.0.2.0 does not support php8. There is a possibility that the developer upgraded it, anything is possible.
The first thing to do is to downgrade your php to 7.4.

In my opinion you would be better to start with a new installation and not try to fix the old Opencart, only to get enough of it working to get the data for a new installation.
Hope fully you can get the old one back up enough to use an import / export tool. https://www.opencart.com/index.php?rout ... sion_id=17
OC3.0.4.0 supports php8 and is stable. You can download it here => opencart.com/index.php?route=cms/download/history

Then check what modules / extensions / theme files etc. you have by comparing the files in the installation folder and your "backup"
From there you will need to update the database from the old database.
Be careful not to override the users / admin passwords and personally I would only copy over what you absolutely need to.