Zen Cart gettng error when selecting products

[Redrider112]

I have a Zencart store with only 3 products. Out of no where when you click on one of the products you get this error.

1054 Unknown column 'p.products_id' in 'on clause'

I looked in the logs and found this error a bunch of times:

PHP Warning: Variable passed to each() is not an array or object in /hermes/<<account details>>/htdocs/Store/includes/application_top.php on line 682

When I originally loaded the site, there was this error across the top of the page:

Warning: I am able to write to the configuration file: /home/users/web/<<account details>>/htdocs/Store/includes/configure.php. This is a potential security risk - please set the right user permissions on this file.

So I went into file manager and changed the permissions for that file to read only. The error is now gone.

I am not sure where to start, and I don't understand why all of a sudden this would happen. I haven't changed anything with that store in months. Of course this is the worst time of the year for this to happen. The store is at: http://www.willingtonpizza.com/Store/

I am using Zen Cart 1.2.6 and really do not plan on updating since all of the customization would be lost (I never planned on chnaging the store, its just a very basic way to order gift certificates)

Any help would be greatly appreciated!! Thanks in advance!

[YvetteKuhns]

You may need to install the latest version of Zen Cart to work on this server. It would be more secure to use. Please see Upgrading from 1.2 to 1.3.x (http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=50874).

Check your database prefixes. Be sure you have a backup of your entire website and database. Save copies of your configure.php file. Check tables with overhead and optimize them. Repair tables if necessary.

Re: 1054 Unknown column 'p.products_id' in 'on clause' (http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=37460)
Since PowWeb upgraded to MySQL5, some of your queries may no longer work. You can upgrade to Zen Cart 1.3 or edit the code yourself.

[Redrider112]

Thanks for your reply, but I don't understand why all of a sudden this happened. Didn't the upgrade take effect a few months ago? Everything was working fine up until this past weekend.

Everytime I have had problems with my site it is because Powweb changed something. This is getting very frustrating, I am not a full time webmaster, I just do this as part of my 60 hour work week. I don't have time to constanty fix stuff. I am really considering switching providers.

[YvetteKuhns]

On which MySQL server is your database? Some were only recently upgraded. If you decide to move to another web host, you could have the same problem. One of my clients had problems with Zen Cart on another web host.

[YvetteKuhns]

all the MySQL boxes should be upgraded by December 12th (http://forums.powweb.com/showpost.php?p=444081&postcount=4)

It appears that some changes are still taking place in regards to slowness.

[Redrider112]

Yvette, thanks for your help so far. You seem to be very knowledgeable about the e-commerce software.

I am guessing that I am going to have to start over from scratch, so I was looking at some of my other options. I originally went w/ zencart because I only need to sell less then 5 items, and I need to be able to securely get credit cards, but then I process them on site. We are a restaurant so we already have a merchant account, once I get the credit card info I then manually run the card.
I see that powweb offers the newer version of Zencart through install central. I was also looking at some of the other options, such as Shopsite or Cubecart. Do you have any knowledge on these products? Shopsite looks nice because I could just add a "add to cart" button to pages on my existing site. I was happy with Zencart (until now of course|) but I remember it was a real pain to customize since you had to find the code and edit it manually. I was hoping for something a little easier.

Thanks again for your input!

[YvetteKuhns]

I only need to sell less then 5 items, and I need to be able to securely get credit cards, but then I process them on site. We are a restaurant so we already have a merchant account, once I get the credit card info I then manually run the card.

There are back end shopping carts where you can use static html pages for those few items in your cart. The cart can calculate the total and submit a form where you and the customer each get a customized confirmation email. You could simply create a one page form and let people choose a quantity for each item and have that information submitted to you. You don't need a big cart or a database!

Since you are manually processing credit cards in-house, you don't need a third-party payment processor and you won't pay monthly gateway fees for online transactions. You know how Zen Cart sends split credit card info and that it is illegal to store credit card info. So, your main issue is handling the credit card information securely. You can encrypt credit card numbers to send via email and decrypt them before processing them. But it doesn't seem very secure. Could you simply verify orders and get credit card info by phone?