We've always tried to do our best in making e-commerce software friendly to the end users and easy for administration. As shown by our long experience, most of our clients succeeded in installing and configuring X-Cart on their own. Setup process, of course, requires some patience and basic computer skills, however, following the simple step-by-step instruction you will most like get a result in less than half an hour.

Remember that any time you need a helping hand our technical support is ready to be at your service. We can provide consultations on any installation problems. Moreover, there's an option when you won't have to do anything yourself. Our installation service takes care of everything and you get a ready-to-work system in a short time without any headache and waste of time.

You can install X-Cart shopping cart software:

• using X-Cart Installation Wizard, or
• manually (for advanced users)

The procedure is different for UNIX and Windows based web servers. Read on to find out the details.

Recommended software

• FTP client like SmartFTP (for Windows) or gFTP (for Unix). Used for uploading, editing and managing files on your Web server.
• Text editor for your templates, style sheets and php sources. There's such a huge number of them that it's hard to make exact recommendations, just try to find the one that's intuitively comfortable and easy to use for you. Make sure the editor you choose edits and creates plain text and not word processor files, rich text files, Microsoft Word or other files, or any other type of file other than plain text. Please refer to PHP Editor Review for the detailed information regarding text editor software for various platforms.
• HTML Editor (if necessary) for visual (WYSIWYG) editing of your pages. Visit htmlArea to find out more about this kind of software.
• File manager for your local computer (e. g. Total Commander for Win32, Midnight Commander for Unix).
• Backup service for your site (please ask your hosting provider for backup options). It takes much less time to make a backup right on Web server rather than retrieving the entire actual content from the web directory (it takes up to several days with large sites).
• File archiver (like WinZip or WinRar) for extracting the distribution package. Be sure the archiver you choose is compatible with the TAR compression format.

The software can be chosen depending on your tastes, we just decided to provide several sources and examples so you could get started.

Installing X-cart via the Installation Wizard

1. Ensure that your server meets the minimum requirements.
2. Do one of the following:

• If your server is Windows-based, or you have a UNIX-based server without the terminal access: Unpack X-Cart distribution on your local computer using WinZIP or any other TAR-compatible archiver, then use your FTP client to upload the resulting files to a server directory which you will be able to access from the Web.

• If your server is UNIX based with terminal access: Use your FTP client to upload X-Cart distribution to a server directory which you will be able to access from the Web, then uncompress the distribution using the following command:

gunzip < x-cart-X.X.tgz | tar -xvf -

or

tar -xzvf x-cart-X.X.tgz

For example, the web-accessible directory may be called 'httpdocs'. If the URL corresponding to the server location home/example.com/httpdocs is http://www.example.com/ and if X-Cart files are inside the folder 'xcart', you will be able to access the installation script at the URL http://www.example.com/xcart/install.php

3. Do one of the following:

• If your server is Windows-based: Skip this step and go to step 4.

• If your server is UNIX-based: Go to the X-Cart directory on the server and change the file access permissions (see man chmod (UNIX command reference) for more information):

> cd xcart

> chmod 777 .
> chmod 666 config.php
> chmod 755 admin/spam.sh
> chmod 755 payment/*.pl

4. Open X-Cart Installation Wizard at the URL http://www.example.com/xcart/install.php page in your web browser. Then follow the Installation Wizard instructions.

5. Please read our Software License Agreement, select the I accept the License Agreement checkbox and click on Next to continue with the installation.

Picture 1. Installation wizard: license agreement.

6. Setup will check PHP configuration on your server.

Picture 2: Installation wizard: checking PHP configuration.

If everything is OK click on Next.

If something FAILED contact your server administrator and inform him about the problem.

Note. If some of the critical dependencies FAILED you will not be able to continue the installation until the problem is resolved.

7. Next, the Installation Wizard will need to know your web server details and MySQL database information.

Picture 3: Installation wizard: preparing to install X-Cart database (request for web server details and MySQL database information).

In the appropriate fields enter the following information:

• Server host name. For example, www.your-store.com.
• Secure server host name. The host name of your secure (HTTPS) server. If at the moment you do not have an HTTPS server, temporarily set this field value to your HTTP server name. Later you will be able to change it by editing $xcart_https_host in your config.php file.
• X-Cart web directory (as a rule, the wizard detects the directory automatically, but if it is not correct, enter the appropriate directory).
• MySQL host name.
• MySQL user name.
• MySQL database name.
• MySQL password.

Note. Usually the MySQL host name is localhost but you should get a MySQL host name, a user name, a database name and a password from your ISP. If you don't feel like you have enough skills and knowledge of MySQL details, don't worry: all you have to do is to contact your hosting provider to get some help and advice. However, there's one more option: our technical support service will gladly provide complex technical assistance and take care of any installation nuances.

Revision date: 31 Jan 2006

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