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Will customizations prevent me upgrading? Will they carry through when I upgrade?
Question
If I customize scripts, or have scripts customized by Cactusoft or another developer, can I still upgrade my store later? Will the customizations carry through when I next upgrade my store?
Answer
Customizations to the ASP scripts will change the way CactuShop works. The degree to which the functionality changes, and how extensive this is (in terms of the number of scripts affected) depends on the modification of course.
We generally advise that users check update releases at least once a month and if necessary patch their cart to ensure they have the latest, most reliable and secure version of the code. However, patching involves overwriting existing scripts with newer versions. If those existing scripts have been customized in some way, to add functionality that is not in the regular CactuShop code, then overwriting them will overwrite this customization.
Similarly, if your store has been customized and you wish to upgrade to a newer version of CactuShop, any customizations you've had done will not carry through to the newer version because you will be overwriting older scripts with newer ones. In most cases, scripts from an older version of CactuShop will not work with the new version because of differences in include files and other underlying code. In some cases, functionality that was added as a customization to an older CactuShop may be built-in as standard to the newer version, in which case it may not be a problem that the customization cannot be upgraded.
Customization should not be confused with personalization. We fully expect most stores to design their own skins. These should not be affected by patches for existing versions, although there is no guarantee that skins will be compatible with future versions of CactuShop.
The database format of each CactuShop major version will tend to differ substantially from the one before it, although we provide a free data tool to copy data from older versions to the latest version. In some cases, customizations to the older database might have to be reversed in order to successfully export data from it to the latest database version.
In summary, customization that involves rewriting ASP code would require that these modified scripts not be overwritten with regular CactuShop scripts or the customization would be lost. In most cases, other scripts that have not been customized *can* still be upgraded and replaced during patch updating however.