1 Overview 

1.1 

What's Changed in v5 

There have been a number of changes to the structure of v5 and some of the 

underlying code when compared to prior versions (v4.x and earlier). Here is a 

brief outline of the changes and the reasons behind them for those who are 

familiar with earlier versions of CactuShop. 

1.1.1 

ASP files moved to root of web 

In previous versions of CactuShop, the ASP files that run the site were in 

three folders   

ASP

, 

cactushopback

 and 

includes

. Files in the 

includes

 folder 

were referenced from files in both the other two folders using a relative path 

such as  ../includes/config.asp . However, permissions settings can prevent 

use of the  ../  part, generating a `parent paths' error. It appears that 

preventing use of parent paths is IIS 6's (Windows Server 2003) default 

setting hence CactuShop users would need to get these settings reset by their 

hosting company in order to use CactuShop. 

Some fixes for the above problem negate the need for permissions changes. 

One is to use virtual includes instead of relative ones. However, this causes 

problems if you wish to run CactuShop in a folder on your site rather than at 

the root of the web. 

Instead, we have moved all the files previously in the 

ASP

 and 

cactushopback

folders to the root of the web, keeping the include files in the same place as 

before. This resolves the issue because no  ../  is required in the path to 

includes or other folders. To help distinguish back end files from front end 

ones, they are prefixed with an underscore ( _ ), which should mean they list 

alphabetically together. 

This change should also improve store speed and search engine visibility, 

since no redirect is required from the root of the web any longer. The home 

page of CactuShop now sits on the root of the web. 

Some users have complained that this makes it harder to add additional 

security to the back end since it is no longer in its own folder. However, we 

have provided beefed up security by way of an optional IP address restriction 

(set in the 

config.asp

 file). 

1.1.2 

Images folders moved to new uploads folder 

Previously in CactuShop, all uploaded product related images were stored in 

folders such as 

images_products

, 

images_versions

, 

images_products_large

, 

etc. However, some hosting companies only set one specific folder on the web 

with the correct permissions to allow image upload to work. In order to 

handle this without requiring the user to extensively recode pages, we have 

moved the images folders within a new folder. By default this is called 

uploads

. If you need to use a similar folder with another name, you can 

change the name of the 

uploads

 folder and change the 

uploadsfolder

 config 

setting (see 7.4.9.5). 

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