How To Set Up OpenCart Store Fast! Step-by-Step Beginners Guide With Pictures

How To Set Up OpenCart Store Fast! Step-by-Step Beginners Guide With Pictures

If you are looking for reliable free eCommerce platform, you definitely come across the name OpenCart. OpenCart is quite popular free, opensource eCommerce platform that combines flexibility, simplicity, and multi-functionality. The same as WooCommerce, It is ideal for all kind of small and media size internet shops.

So, without further ado, let’s go through, how to set up OpenCart store fast.

This post may contain affiliate links and I may earn a small commission when you click on the links at no additional costs to you.

Read also: OpenCart vs PrestaShop. Facts And Real-life Users Experience

What is OpenCart

OpenCart was introduced into the market back in 2008. Since then its developers’ team has been seeking to simplify store management for all types of online businesses- beginners, small businesses, medium-sized stores, and large enterprises.

This eCommerce platform is not only simple to use, it also comes with wide range of customization options. Users can further customize your store by using extensions. Extensions are add-on programs that provide extra functionality to OpenCart webstore similar like addons in WordPress.

Read also: ECWID, IS IT REALLY WORTH IT?! AN HONEST REVIEW – PROS, CONS AND ALTERNATIVES

OpenCart Features

  • Easy-to-use interface
  • The ability to create and manage unlimited products, both physical and virtual
  • Abundance of payment and delivery options
  • Personalization and extra features through free and paid plugins
  • A way to manage several stores from the same backend
  • Multi-currency and multi-language options
  • Detailed SEO options and responsiveness out of the box
  • A wide range of marketing tools

Requirements for OpenCart platform

OpenCart can run on any ecommerce hosting environment with PHP 5.4 or above, MySQL database, minimum 500MB of free space (store size is dependent on the number of categories, products, and images) and Apache Server mod_rewrite module.

OpenCart also requires few PHP libraries/modules including Curl, ZIP, Zlib, GD Library, Mcrypt, Mbstrings, and XML. It is recommended that the above system requirements should always be available at your hosting provider. During the installation process, OpenCart will check for all of these requirements.

Hosting for OpenCart

OpenCart the same as WordPress is self-hosted platform. It means, you install it on your own server and take full care about hosting, maintenance, management, and security yourself. This is in contrast to SaaS (software as a service) solutions, such as Shopify, which provides much of it as part of its service, but also offers less flexibility and control.

So, before to set up an OpenCart store, you need to have a hosting provider. Remember, with OpenCart you will need an SSL certificate so make sure that your chosen web hosting provider has one.

Hostgator is one of the most popular web hosting providers among OpenCart shop owners. Their basic plan starts from $2.75/month and it offers free SSL certificate, easy WordPress installs, and a free domain for a year.

For purposes of this tutorial I am using web hosting from smaller, cheaper but reliable European company Area.lv.

They’ve been around a long time, offer great hosting at a great price, and have a great reputation for supporting their customers. They have a 99.9% uptime guarantee along with 24/7 support whenever you need help. Among other, the offer free SSL certificate, free daily back up service, user friendly control panel – cPanel and 1-click OpenCart installation. And last but not least, Area.lv hosting pricing starts from 1.13$ USD (1.00€ EUR) a month.

How to set up OpenCart with “One click” installation

Most hosting providers offers easy one click OpenCart installation. This is definitely the easiest way How To Set Up OpenCart Store Fast. To do that, log in on to your hosting account cPanel and search for application installer.

If you are using Area.lv, into cPanel, scroll down and look for section called “Softaculos Apps Installer”.

How To Set Up OpenCart Store Fast: Softaculos Apps Installer.

Click on OpenCart icon, this will lead you to next OpenCart installation page.

OpenCart one click installation

Click “Install Now” Button, on next page you will have to choose OpenCart version and installation URL. I recommend always choose the latest OpenCart version. Currently it is 3.0.3.6.

OpenCart one click installation

Scroll down, next you will be promoted to enter some store details, such as store name and description, physical address and company name. You can change this information later.

How To Set Up OpenCart Store Fast: OpenCart one click installation.

After, you can set up your admin name, password and email.

OpenCart one click installation

Finally, set up admin language.

OpenCart one click installation

When it is done click “Install” button and installation will begin.

OpenCart one click installation

Usually installation takes 3-4 minutes. When it is done you should be able to see OpenCart front store if you type your domain name into browser.

How To Set Up OpenCart Store Fast! Step-by-Step Beginners Guide

OpenCart manual installation

If the hosting provider of your chose does not provide on click installation, you can always install OpenCart manually. This is also straight forward process.

Preparation for OpenCart installation

First you have to create a database where you will store the files of your open card site. To do that, log on to your cPanel, go to databases section and enter in MySQL databases.

OpenCart manual installation

Give your new database a name and hit the create database button. Now it will show up in your database list.

The next step is to create a user and assign it to the database, so you have control over it.  Scroll down to “MySQL Users. Add New User” and create new user. Make sure to save username and password, because you will need it later.

How To Set Up OpenCart Store Fast!

Finally, scroll down to the section Add user to database.  Select database and user.

Preparation for OpenCart installation

Now hit the Add button and then assign all the privileges for the database to your user.

Preparation for OpenCart installation

When it’s done, click “Make Changes”button. Now you are ready to move to step 2.

OpenCart Download

Go to opencart.com and click on the free download button.

How To Set Up OpenCart Store Fast! Step-by-Step Beginners Guide

Next, click the download now and get the latest version of the platform.  Now the OpenCart files are on your computer.

OpenCart upload to hosting server

Go back to cPanel and find the file manager app.

OpenCart upload to hosting server

Click on it and you will get access to all the files on your server the folder you need is public_HTML.

How To Set Up OpenCart Store Fast

Open public_HTML folder and inside it create a new folder. Name it “opencart”.

OpenCart manual installation

Open this newly created folder and while you’re there click the upload button.

OpenCart upload to hosting server

Find the open card zip you just downloaded.

How To Set Up OpenCart Store Fast! Step-by-Step Beginners Guide: OpenCart manual installation
OpenCart manual installation

Once it’s uploaded select zip and click the extract button.

OpenCart upload to hosting server
OpenCart upload to hosting server

This will unzip all the files inside in your folder. You will see a lot of files and will just delete them and leave the folder called upload.

How To Set Up OpenCart Store Fast! Step-by-Step Beginners Guide: OpenCart upload to hosting server
OpenCart upload to hosting server

Open it and remove the dot txt part from htaccess file. Then rename the file config-dist.php to config.php. Do the same with the config file located in admin folder – admin/config-dist.php to admin/config.php.

OpenCart upload to hosting server

Lastly, move all files and folders from Upload directory to the root of your server, it means to public_HTML directory. When it is done, delate upload folder.

Opencart installation

Now when you enter the domain of your store in your web browser it will be looking for the files directly in public_HTML folder.

Opencart installation

First step here is the License Agreement. When you’re ready, click continue.

The second step is checking if all the server settings are ok.

How To Set Up OpenCart Store Fast! Step-by-Step Beginners Guide

If everything’s in the green you’re good to go. Click continue. The third step is to configure your database details.

Opencart installation

The most important things here are the username you have set for the database user your password and the name of your database. Finally, you will have to configure your admin username and password for the open card store. Once you’re done with that, click continue to finish the process.

Opencart installation

That’s it. Your new open card store is installed. Now you can log-in to your administration with the credentials you just created in the last installation step. It is achievable directly from installation page or you can go – www.yourdomain.com/admin.

After login, you will see a pop-up asking you to move your storage directory outside of your web directory for security reasons.

Opencart installation

Just click “move” button and it will be automatically moved.

How To Set Up OpenCart Store Fast! Step-by-Step Beginners Guide: Opencart installation

Finally, go back to the cPanel / File manager and delete install folder from the store files.

How To Set Up OpenCart Store Fast! Step-by-Step Beginners Guide

This is also a security measure which was suggested by the warning notification after you installed your store. Once you do this, you’re all set to start setting up your store fill it with products and start customizing it to your liking. That’s it, now you have learned How To Set Up OpenCart Store Fast.

Read also: Prestashop, An Honest Opinion About Installation, Configuration, And Usability

OpenCart Store Examples That Will Inspire You

According to Built With trends list, currently 928,148 websites using are OpenCart. Here is list of 10 excellent OpenCart shop examples. May be in the process of creation of your own OpenCart shop, you can draw inspiration from these examples.

Woodenposters

6dollarshirts

Wholesalebox

Tokocamzone

Sockbroker

Jovani

Sceptre

Slingmods

Forfansbyfans

Brandshop

Wrapping Up

OpenCart was built to make life easier for merchants and customers to interact. Based in an Open Source environment, this shopping cart solution gives you to ability to have your business be search engine friendly with a user interface that is welcoming and inviting.

Read also: Big Cartel review. What they’re not telling you!

If you’re an online retailer, you’ll likely need shopping functionality on your website, and OpenCart is one option to help you and your customers complete the shopping tasks easily.