Introduction: How to Transfer OsCommerce to Magento 1.9 Automatically

By LitExtension
About: I am Melanie Johnson, web developer at LitExtension, a provider of shopping cart migration tools & services.

osCommerce to Magento 1.9 migration toolallows e-merchants and developers to import customers from osCommerce to Magento site automatically. Especially, using this kind of Shopping Cart Migration Tool, store owners can save their time and money.

Step 1: Preparation

For Source Store (osCommerce):

  • Please ensure you have the right permission to upload files into your osCommerce source store.
  • It must not block access from Magento target store to the connector.

Source store can operate normally during migration as it requires a very limited resource for the process.

PHP Compatibility: PHP 4.x or later.

For Target Store (Magento):

It is strongly recommended to backup Magento target store first.

  • Target store should be placed in a stable hosting or in localhost.
  • It also must not block connection to source store.
  • Webserver should have full permission to write on /media folder.

PHP Compatibility: PHP 5.3 or later.

Magento Compatibility: 1.7 or later.

Required PHP extensions:

  • pdo_mysql
  • simplexml
  • mcrypt
  • hash
  • GD
  • DOM
  • curl
  • mb_strings

Required PHP configurations:

  • memory_limit no less than 256Mb
  • allow_url_fopen must be On
  • base64_decode should be allowed

Disable email notification

To prevent email notification during customer import, it is recommended to disable it via Magento backend and reenable when migration is completed.

Login to Magento backend

Go to the System->Configuration menu.

On the left hand menu under the Advanced tab select the System menu item.

Select ‘Mail Sending Settings’ from the selection on the right hand side.

Set Disable email communications to ‘Yes’, then no email will send through Magento.

Step 2: Setup

After downloading the product zip file from our store, please extract it into a folder. The module consists of two main parts: Magento Data Migration Module (“app” and “skin” folder) and Source Cart Connector (“Magento_connector” folder)


I. Target Magento Data Migration Module Setup
1. Check to see if Magento’s Compilation mode has been enabled. If it has, it’s vital to turn it off before installing an extension or making any code changes (go to System > Tools > Compilation).

2. Use upload file by ftp or uploaded directly to upload or copy all folders in the zip package to your Magento site root folder. This will not overwrite any existing files, just add new files to the folder structure.

3. If you are using Magento’s compilation mode, you need to hit the “Run Compilation Process” button to update the compiled state with the newly installed extension (go to System > Tools > Compilation).

4. Log into your Magento admin console and go to System/Cache Management. Click “Clear Storage Cache“.

5. Log out admin panel and log in again.

II. Source Cart Connector Setup
Extract “Magento_connector” into Source Cart root folder. After finished please make sure Migration Connector can be reached at: http(s)://yourstore.com/magento_connector/connector.php

If you have any problem reaching the link please ensure you have htaccess configured correctly and the file has execution permission.

For security, please open connector.php, find this very first line:

define(‘LECM_TOKEN’, ‘123456’);

And change “123456” to another string, this will be used to enter to the Migration Form and acts like “password” to prevent unauthorized data access to your source store.

Note: please do not use special characters in token or else the migration tool might fail to work, it should contain number and alphabet characters only. Example:

Good token: 12ab34cd56

Bad token: #Fr35h#Mi!5

Step 3: Plugins Setup

Plugins are purchased and setup separately into Magento Data Migration Module. They will provide additional functionalities to the tool. Normally plugins need to be customized and tweaked by LitExtension Team to fit customers requirements and will be sent to customers later on. There are a few types of plugin:

– Products and Categories SEO Urls Plugin: helps transfer Products and Categories urls.

– Custom Fields Plugin: help migrate custom fields from osCommerce to Magento 1.9. This is useful in case customers have customized their store, for example: adding fields to database tables, and also want to migrate these fields into Magento Store.

– Customer Password Plugin: special plugin which adds the ability to read passwords encrypted by osCommerce to Magento. All passwords are migrated over and remains encrypted, customers can login to the new shop right away without the need of resetting passwords.

To install plugins, just copy plugin files into the instructed folder inside Cart Migration Magento Module, new functionalities will be enabled.

Step 4: Migration Speed Optimization

For Source Store:

  • The faster source store can be accessed, the faster migration speed will be.

For Target Store:

  • As migration process is processed mostly on target store, it is critical to have a fast magento server. Recommended server configuration: 4 cores or higher, 4G memory or higher.
  • Compilation should be enabled to improve speed (System > Tools > Compilation).
  • Cache should be enabled to improve speed (System > Cache Management).

Step 5: Enter License Key

License Key is an encoded string which comes with your download package. This key is needed to activate your Migration Tool

1. After purchasing the product, please login to our store and enter “My downloadable products” section. Here you will find download link and license key for the download package.

2. Login your Magento target store backend, select Cart Migration > Configuration, and copy and paste your license key here.

Step 6: Migration

Please login your Magento Target Store backend, select Cart Migration > Migration

The migration will go through 3 simple steps. Just hit “Next” when you finish one step to advance.

1: Source Cart Configuration

Cart Type: select corresponding source cart type (osCommerce)

Cart Url: source cart full url

Cart Token: the token string which has been configured in connector.php

2: Migration Configuration

Root Category: the category of current Magento store to import all source cart categories into.

Product Attribute Set: select an Attribute Set which is used to import products, all necessary attributes in migration process will be created in to this set.

Languages Mapping: If your osCommerce cart is multilingual, corresponding languages should be available in Magento Store. You may need to create additional languages in Magento store to avoid data loss.

Currencies Mapping: Assign source cart currencies to proper Magento store currencies. Creating currencies in Magento store may be needed.

Orders Status Mapping: Assign source cart order statuses to proper Magento store order statuses. Creating additional order statues in target store may be needed.

Entities to Migrate: select all entities to migrate or just a part of them.

Additional Options:
Migrate recent data: if you choose this option, it will migrate new data only. Supposed you have just finished a full migration from your osCommerce to Magento store, after that osCommerce store is still live and continue getting new data, and you want to get your Magento target store updated with the new data, select this feature to avoid starting over again.

Clear current data on Target Store before Migration: if you choose this option, all current products, categories, manufacturers, customers, orders, product reviews, taxes will be cleared.

Migrate categories and products SEO URLs: if you choose this option, old SEF urls of source will be preserved in Magento store, allowing you to maintain your Page rank.

Transfer images in product descriptions to Target Store: download all images in product description into your store so that it won’t have to refer back to your source store or anywhere else for images.

Preserve Customer IDs on Target Store: Migration tool helps you preserve your old Customer IDs for easier reference.

Preserve Order IDs on Target Store: this will help you preserve your old Order IDs for easier reference

3: Migration

The migration will take place automatically in this final step. In order for it to progress, you should not close your browser of remove source cart connector.
After the migration is completed, click on “Clear Cache and ReIndex Data” to finish. If you don’t want to run it right here or it returns false for any reason, you can do that manually in System > Cache Management and System > Index Management.