New items do not appear on web site!!

[bluefire]

Hello,

This is my first post in this forum, so I'll try to be as precise and concise with this aggravating problem I've recently encountered:

A few days ago, I had my webhost change my user name and password for Cpanel, and I had them update any and all references from my old domain name to my new domain.
In the process, somehow my database "disappeared" (on their end supposedly) and I was told that I had to recreate a new database. To me, that meant I just lost everything that I've been working on for the past month!
Anyway, I sent them an e-mail asking what it was I needed to do, and they ended up restoring my old database with the new relevant domain information in all files...(So, how'd they do THAT if it disappeared?)
Now, all that is just great BUT now I have a MAJOR problem and I'm getting nowhere with the support on this issue [with them]: Ininitially, after the information change and database issue, I could not access Cpanel OR My Admin (in osCommerce) but after countless e-mails about this, all that was fixed...
NOW, when I go into My Admin and add a new product (I'm still building and won't be live for a long time), I can see the addition IN My Admin, but the product DOES NOT SHOW UP on the website itself!
No "clearing the cache", et al, has any effect (which was what I thought the problem was at first). Even doing that and rebooting leads to nowhere.
So, I've done a little searching and found that there was a user name/password problem in the admin/includes/configure.php and it was fixed (wrong---old---user name/password in the file!).
Regardless, I still cannot see any new products listed after I addd them in My Admin!
Does anyone have any idea WHY this happened? Or, better yet, HOW TO FIX IT? (I am getting absolutely NOWHERE on this with my host!)
Please, if anyone has any advice or KNOWS HOW TO FIX THIS PROBLEM, please let us know. Thank you.

[michael_s]

I can shed some light on this for you...

When changing a username in cpanel, it is supposed to change the username on all the mysql databases too. Usually this works fine, but cpanel can be glitchy sometimes.

Chances are, your data was never deleted, but the databases either did not get renamed, or permissions did not get transferred properly. Either way, all the host probably did was update the permissions or the account username on the tables. If they have not done this before, they probably thought the DB was lost, because it was no longer visible through your account.

As for your osCommerce woes, make sure you update the configure.php files to use your new database names. This will look something like:

newcpanelusername_youroscdatabasename

Also, make sure you update the path in your configure.php files to use the new accountname in the path definitions.

[bluefire]

Thank you for the response. I've done a little digging here and at osCommerce's forums and have run across the "http uploads" issue in the php.ini file. However, I cannot find that file, on the host server (looking via ftp) or in the latest backup download I have. Where do I look to see if http file upload is enabled? Isn't that the process that My Admin uses (I'm still new to php but I'm learning...)?
Also, I've previously looked at my configure.php and other than the user name/password changes I had to make, the file is coded properly.
If this problem lies somewhere in MySQL, then I'm lost...I have no experience with it at all.
As far as permissions, I've asked my host at least 7 or 8 times now what the permissions should be set to, OR that they set them for me. Why on earth wouldn't a host disclose this information to its customer[s]?
I STILL think permissions is the real problem: I attempted to make numerous types of changes in My Admin, but NOT ONE OF THOSE CHANGES is reflected on the site (even something as simply changing showing a product's weight). My Admin ITSELF will accept the change, but not produce the change on the site.
Any further ideas would be of great help. Thanks again.