OpenCart 2 Documentation

Complete installation

If you don't want to spend your time installing the template, don't hesitate to order installation service using our live-chat.

This kind of installation can be used in case, you do not have a ready to use OpenCart store. The 'themeXXX(full).zip' archive contains OpenCart engine files and theme files including sample data, so you do not need to install an OpenCart engine separately. Template sample data will make your site look just like our demo template including all the sample products, modules and site configuration.

Creating a database

Once the files are uploaded to the server, you need to prepare an empty database for you OpenCart website. It should be created with the help of the database management tool in your hosting cPanel (PhpMyAdmin typically).

Follow a few simple of instructions to create a new database in phpMyAdmin (check the slides below):

In order to get to the database list, click Databases button in the top navigation menu.
Enter a new database name in the "Create new database" field.
On the right side click the Create button.

You should see the newly created database in the list. In order to get the access to the database, click its name:

1. Open the "Databases" tab, in order to get to the list of databases.

2. Enter a database name.

3. Click "Create".

4. The newly created database appears in the list. Click the database name to get the access to the database.

Feel free to check the detailed video guide How to create a database .

In case of any issues, please contact your hosting provider for further support.

Uploading the template

In order to start working with OpenCart, you need to upload the files to your server. You can do it via your hosting cPanel or using an alternative FTP client.

Open the template folder.
Go to the 'themeXXX' folder and unzip the 'themeXXX(full).zip' archive to your computer. Upload the content of the archive to your server ( How to upload files to server , How to upload files to server using cPanel (WebHost manager, WHM) ).
Set the correct permissions to your OpenCart folders and files:
- system/cache/;
- system/logs/;
- system/download/;
- system/upload/;
- image/;
- image/cache/;
- image/catalog/;
- config.php;
- admin/config.php.
The permissions should be set to CHMOD 755 or 777 depending on the server configuration. In order to do so, select all your files and folders and find the buttons "Change Permissions" if you are working in File Manager. If you are working with Linux — use command chmod -R 777 "folder_name".

OpenCart Installation

Open any browser and enter the OpenCart directory path in the browser address bar (for example http://your_domain_name/opencart ). You will see the OpenCart installation page:

Installation license;
Preliminary stage;
Configuration;
Ready!

Installation license

Check an OpenCart license agreement and click the Continue button if you agree.

Preliminary stage

At the second step OpenCart is going to check if your hosting settings match the required ones and if the files and folders permissions are correct.

Configuration

At the Configuration step you need to input your database details. The MySQL database was created on the preparation step, now you need to enter the details you have used:

database server;
database name;
database username;
password.

If there are any issues with the database details, contact your hosting provider.

You need to create the administrator user for your store. Enter the name, password and administrators e-mail address. The details you enter will be used to log into your store backend.

Ready!

This is the last OpenCart installation step. You will see 2 options: you can be redirected to your OpenCart website or to the OpenCart admin panel.

You can use the following installation instructions: OpenCart. How to install OpenCart engine and template (using “fullpackage”).

In order to set access restrictions, change the permissions to 644 and 444 for the following files:

config.php;
index.php;
admin/config.php;
admin/index.php;
system/startup.php.

Remove the "install" folder from your server. You will not be able to enter the store until the folder remains on the server.

The installation is complete. In order to open the store page, enter domain name in the browser address bar. In order to access OpenCart admin panel, enter domain_name/admin.

In order to prevent separate template files from being downloaded from your website after uploading it to server, you should check whether direct files download is forbidden for public. In order to do this, you should open .htaccess file in the site root directory and check if it includes the following content: <FilesMatch&rt; "(?i)((\.tpl|\.ini|\.log|(? Order deny, allow Deny from all </FilesMatch&rt; In case this code is not there, you'd better add it to the end of the file and rename ".htaccess.txt" file to ".htaccess."

Installation over existing store