Web-N00b

You’ve decided to start your own business but you don’t know how to start, here is a small manual for you.
You should decide what you want to sell, is this digital product, or some physical goods which should be also delivered to your client, or you just want to sell some service, for example consulting.
If you want to sell physical goods, I advise you to try following e-commerce engines as: Oscommerce, Zen Cart. Both are free and easy in use, also you’ll be able to find a lot of free and non-free templates for them.
I’ll describe how to work with Zen Cart, (if someone needs a tutorial for Oscommerce, just contact with me and I’ll describe it too).

In this manual I’ll describe, how to install Zen Cart, change template (from default one to some, which will meet your requirements) and add your goods.

Some companies have auto installer for such popular engines (for example our hosting provider), so you need no special skills for installation and can skip this step:

1. Download Zen Cart.

2. Upload ZIP archive into your hosing account.

3. Extract files from the archive in your hosing account.

4. Then visit your website, if you’ve done everything correct you’ll see such image.

4. Click on link in the 1st line.

5. When you reach “Prerequisites” step while installing, you’ll see error list, here is a basic errors:

How to fix?

• create includes/configure.php and admin/includes/configure.php files in Zen Cart folder and set 777 permissions for these files.
• set 777 permissions for all files which are marked as “Unwriteable” or ask your host support to do so.

Then press Re-check button. If you’ve done everything correct you’ll see “Install” button.

6. Next step is MySQL database configuration. You should create a database, username for your database and add it to your database. (My host provides CPanel it allows to setup database in few clicks). If you don’t know how to configure your MySQL database, please contact with your host, here is default settings (but some hosts can have different MySQL server configuration):

Database Type: MySQL

Database Host: localhost

Database Username: some_username (NEVER USE root), (on CPanel it has mask CPANELusername_dbusername)

Database Password: database_password

Database Name: database_name (on CPanel it has mask CPANELusername_dbname)

Then click “Save Database Settings“.

7. If you plan to use SSL, then in “System Setup” step, enable it, if not – just click “Save System Settings“.

8. If you have phpbb forum, you can setup a link from your e-commerce website to it via step “phpbb setup“, if not just click “Save phpbb Settings“.

9. “Store Setup” step allows to define your store name and personal data (If you’ve entered some info incorrectly you’ll be able to change it later in admin panel).

10. “Admin setup” step allows to define your admin login info, please don’t use simple passwords, because you can be hacked.

Thats all your e-commerce website is installed your website should looks like THIS ONE, now few advises which should help you to increase a security for your e-commerce website:

1. Please delete zc_install folder from Zen Cart folder.
2. Set 444 permissions for includes/configure.php and admin/includes/configure.php files in Zen Cart folder.
3. Create .htaccess file in “admin” folder and add following code and replace XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX to your WAN IP, you can check your WAN IP here :

Order Deny,Allow
Deny from all
Allow from XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX
It helps to protect your admin area from hackers.

1. Rename your admin folder (for example to master folder) and change settings in ./master/includes/configure.php file

Old records are:

define(‘DIR_WS_ADMIN’, ‘/zencart/admin/’);
define(‘DIR_WS_HTTPS_ADMIN’, ‘/zencart/admin/’);

should be changed to

define(‘DIR_WS_ADMIN’, ‘/zencart/master/’);
define(‘DIR_WS_HTTPS_ADMIN’, ‘/zencart/master/’);

Next step is How to add your goods and install a template.

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