Upgrading To New Actinic Versions

There are two types of upgrade in Actinic

·      Application Upgrade - e.g. from Catalog to Business, or from Business to Designer.

·      Version Upgrade - e.g. from Actinic v6 to Actinic v8

Application Upgrade

Once you have purchased a new license key from Actinic Software (or one of our partners) go to 'Housekeeping | Upgrade' and enter it there.

Version Upgrade

The standard way to upgrade to a new version is to upgrade your site(s) as you install the new version. This will not affect your current live site(s) in any way. The data from your current site(s) will simply be copied into the new installation and then upgraded.

The instructions for doing this are as follows:

1.  Within your currently live copy of Actinic, download all the latest orders from your website (see Orders In Actinic). If you have a large volume of sales, you may want to go to 'Business Settings | Ordering' and tick where it says 'Suspended' and upload. This will replace all your 'Add to Cart' buttons with a message saying 'CATALOG SUSPENDED'. After suspending online ordering, wait half an hour and download orders again to ensure there are none up there. This eliminates the risk of any orders being lost during the upgrade.

2.  Now install the new version of Actinic as described in Installation.

3.  As you start the installation process, you will have the choice to either 'Install New' or 'Upgrade Installation'. This is where you tell the installer that you want to upgrade your current Actinic site(s) now. Select the 'Upgrade Installation' option and click 'Next>'.

4.  You can now specify the sites that you wish to upgrade. Select all the ones you want and then click 'Next>'.

5.  Next, you will need to decide which of your upgraded sites will become your 'Primary Site' (i.e. that one that first appears when Actinic starts). Select one and click 'Next>'.

Actinic will then install its program files, and afterwards it will copy your selected sites from your current to your new installation.

6.  Once the installation has completed, you can start Actinic. You will see a message about upgrading your database and then a message about upgrading the site.

7.  After this, a window may appear offering to run the 'Site Upgrader' with three options - 'Yes', 'No' and 'Cancel'.

·      Click 'No' and this will simply apply a standard look and feel to your site (backing up your current templates beforehand).

·      Click 'Yes' to launch the Site Upgrader, which will attempt to upgrade your templates to the latest version.

8.  When your site has been upgraded, Actinic will then close and you will need to restart it.

You will now have your site upgraded to the new version.

You can now change to 'Test Mode' in order to check the upgraded store works correctly online. To do this, go to 'Web | Switch to Test Mode'. When you next upload, Actinic will upload your store pages to a sub-folder called 'test' within the 'acatalog' folder online. Once you can verified the store is working correctly, you can switch out of test mode and put the site live.

To put your site live:

1.  Go into your new site, and double-check that you are going to upload to the correct location by checking 'Web | Network Setup'. These settings should be identical to the settings in your old Actinic site.

2.  Go to 'Web | Refresh Website' to upload the site.

3.  Once it has uploaded successfully, go to 'Business Settings | Ordering' and un-tick 'Suspended' in order to make the site active again (if you ticked this box earlier).

4.  You can now update the site by clicking the  button.