Upgrading vs Clean Install from AC 7

[mouse_8b]

We have a store running AC 7.0.7. The store started at 7.0.2, and in addition to AbleCommerce updates, has a custom theme, custom conLib controls, and 3rd party add-ons. It also has a few gigs of old product images and other random files on the server. With the improvements to AC Gold, we don't need our AC7 add-ons. We are also going to update our site theme, so the custom theme and conlibs won't need to be upgraded either.

Since I have a lot of stuff that is not needed anymore, I was considering a clean install of AC Gold. I think the biggest issue would be that customers would have to register again. AC ties to our brick & mortar point of sale, so I would still have the customer information and sales history, it just would not be online. All the products would get synced up also, so I'm not concerned with having to put all of my products back into the catalog.

Is there anything that I am missing? I like to keep things neat, so with my personal stuff I generally just reformat & reinstall when a system gets too messy. However, this is a business, so I don't want to overlook something important.

With an upgrade, I am concerned that some of the add-ons might cause an issue. I know there are extra database tables, extra pages, and scheduled routines, but would these affect an upgrade at all? I don't need the add-ons anymore, so even if they did not affect the upgrade, that data would just be sitting and taking up space. That's probably not a big deal, but I'm not sure. Am I getting worried over nothing? Also, would there be any performance benefits to a clean install versus an upgrade?

I don't know if anyone can really answer these questions for me, but any insights would be appreciated.

[Shopping Cart Admin]

Hello Cade,

It's all new code and files so the upgrade is just making a few changes to the database from 7.0.7 to make it work with GOLD, the databases are mostly the same. I don't think I'd abandon all of my users/passwords for the sake of being 'clean'.

Again none of the AC7.0.7 files will be retained during the migration to GOLD. A few legacy fields and a table or two are nothing to worry about.

[jmestep]

If I were doing it, I wouldn't do a clean install, I would run the upgrade as Mike says above. The custom tables that won't be used in Gold could be deleted after the upgrade. You will possibly run into a few error messages having to do with the database, but those are usually just warning messages. I do see that in almost any Able 7 to Gold upgrade because we have done performance tuning on the database and added indexes in the past. You should definitely make sure you run the routines to clean up your data before you start. Here is the link for that.
http://help.ablecommerce.com/upgrades/a ... o_gold.htm