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CS-Cart is an open source e-commerce shopping cart solution that can be used to setup your free online shopping store such as eBay, Snapdeal and Flipkart etc. CS-Cart is the best shopping cart solution for building an ecommerce website from a small web store to a virtual shopping mall. A ready storefront, support for many payment and shipping options, full inventory control, unlimited products, promotional tools, and other features out of the box.
CS-Cart comes with three editions: Ultimate(Free), Ultimate (Paid), Multi-vendor(Paid). Please visit this page to view the comparison of these three editions. In this tutorial let us build a free online e-store using CS-Cart software.
We already have shown you how to setup online store using Prestashop in our previous tutorial. In this how-to let us build a online store using using CS-Cart. This how-to was tested on CentOS 6.4, although it will work on other RPM based distro’s. My test box hostname and IP address are server.madkour.com and 192.168.1.200/24. Replace the values with your own where it appropriate.
Prerequisites
First you have to install and configure LAMP server.
Now install the following prerequisites too.
# yum install php-mcrypt php-pdo php-cli php-mysql php-gd php-xml libtool-ltdl mhash mcrypt -y
Create Database and User for CS-Cart
For instance, here i am going to create a database called “cscartdb” and database user called “cscartuser” for CS-Cart.
# mysql -u root -p Enter password: Welcome to the MariaDB monitor. Commands end with ; or \g. Your MariaDB connection id is 3 Server version: 5.5.31-MariaDB MariaDB Server Copyright (c) 2000, 2013, Oracle, Monty Program Ab and others. Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement. MariaDB [(none)]> create database cscartdb; Query OK, 1 row affected (0.02 sec) MariaDB [(none)]> GRANT ALL ON cscartdb.* TO cscartuser@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'centos'; Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec) MariaDB [(none)]> flush privileges; Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec) MariaDB [(none)]> exit Bye
Firewall and SELinux Settings
Allow the apache default port “80″ through iptables/Router. Edit file /etc/sysconfig/iptables,
# vi /etc/sysconfig/iptables
Add the following lines.
-A INPUT -p udp -m state --state NEW --dport 80 -j ACCEPT -A INPUT -p tcp -m state --state NEW --dport 80 -j ACCEPT
Now restart the iptables service.
# /etc/init.d/iptables restart
I don’t want to mess up with SELinux, so here i disabled it.
Edit file /etc/selinux/config,
# vi /etc/selinux/config
Set the SELINUX value as “disabled”.
SELINUX=disabled
Restart the system to take effect the saved changes.
Getting CS-Cart Software
Download the latest version from here. I downloaded it my current directory.
Note: Here you can host your e-store in two methods.
1. Directly from the web root folder, so that you can access your website by navigating to http://domain-name/.
2. Alternatively create a sub directory in web root folder and host website from the sub-directory i.e you can access your website using URL http://domain-name/sub-directory-name.
Here, for testing purpose, i create a sub-directory directory called “cscart” under apache root folder and copy the cs-cart zip file to the cscart folder.
# mkdir /var/www/html/cscart # cp cscart_v4.0.1-ultimate.tgz /var/www/html/cscart/
Now go to the cscart directory and extract the cs-cart zip file.
# cd /var/www/html/cscart/ # tar -zxvf cscart_v4.0.1-ultimate.tgz
Adjust the following files/folders permissions as shown below.
Run the following commands one by one in your terminal.
# chmod 666 config.local.php # chmod -R 777 design/ images/ var/ # find design -type f -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 666 # find images -type f -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 666 # find var -type f -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 666
Begin CS-Cart Installation
Now navigate to “http://domain-name/cscart/install” or “http://ip-address/cscart/install” from your web browser. The following screen should appear.
Accept the license agreement and click Next.
Enter the database name, database user, password, administration email and password etc. Click Next to continue.
Now select your CS-Cart edition. For testing purpose i select the free edition.
After the installation is done, you will see the Installation Successfully Finished wizard. Click Go to the Settings wizard to make store setup. Click Close to go straight to the dashboard. You will be able to make settings later in the administration panel.
This is how your Administration panel looks.
If you want to further customize your store as per your liking, go to the Administration section by clicking on the Administration link on the top right corner. In the Administration link you can do the following:
- View orders, sales reports, shipment details etc.
- create new products, categories etc.
- Administer and create users and groups etc.
- Add contents to your website etc.
Also you can import/export the data’s and upgrade it to Paid version.
Access Your Store
You can access your online store by navigating to “http://domain-name/cscart” or “http://ip-address/cscart”. The default site is look like below.
Also you can access it with URL “http://domain-name/cscart/acme” or “http://ip-address/cscart/acme”.
Post Installation
After CS-Cart installation, remove the install/ directory.
# rm -fr install/
Change the following folders/files permissions to secure your e-store as shown below.
# chmod 644 config.local.php # chmod 644 design/ .htaccess images/.htaccess # chmod 664 var/.htaccess var/themes_repository/.htaccess # chmod 644 design/index.php images/index.php # chmod 664 var/index.php var/themes_repository/index.php
