REVIEWS
online store owners

Hi all! After the New Year holidays, we launched an online store where you can order or purchase children's products such as strollers, sleds, snow scooters, tubing, car seats, and many others. In this regard, I want to talk about one very interesting service - ShopConstructor.ru. It is with the help of this service that we have the opportunity to make a beautiful, high-quality and fully functional IM very quickly and inexpensively. Managers and support service always quickly answer questions and help resolve issues. By the way, there are a lot of free bonuses. Thanks guys for the quality service. Well, we are waiting for everyone in our online store.

There was a huge choice of where to turn, but according to the reviews, only one came up, and it was a good idea, in case anyone urgently needs an online store at an affordable price, you can contact the company Shopconstructor.ru. I urgently needed an online store, as soon as possible, I contacted the assistant managers, who clarified all the questions, and the programmers immediately got to work, and within 5 days, everything was ready. Thank you for the work you have done. If you need sites of this type again, I will contact you again).

I’ll share my story of meeting shopconstructor.ru. In the fall of last 2017, I came to the conclusion that having a store “in contact” is not enough, since online sales For me, more familiar, I decided to focus on creating a full-fledged online store. The budget was limited, the search criteria were simple: not expensive, beautiful, easy to select and order, the ability to edit yourself, cheap to maintain, the ability to expand the functionality of the store (as the company grows).

There are enough offers on the Internet for creating IM, but it was extremely difficult to choose one based on my criteria; I searched for more than a month. Having paid attention to the shopconstructor service, I studied almost the entire connection on the site, by the way useful articles they are in

This series of articles is designed to help new OpenCart developers raise their level of knowledge and help them become more advanced developers.

This is especially true for those developers who are familiar with PHP, Object-Oriented Programming, and the Model-View-View (MVC) design pattern.

In the first part we will consider the following questions:

• What is OpenCart;
• Installing OpenCart on a local machine;
• Parsing the basic structure of directories and files.

What is OpenCart?

In the modern age of information and technology, no one can diminish the importance of the Internet in our lives. In this light, no one will be surprised by the fact that the direction of e-commerce is developing at a rapid pace.

OpenCart is a free, advanced e-commerce system with open source code, designed to simplify the creation of your own online store.

Why OpenCart?

There are many factors speaking in favor of OpenCart, but here are the main and most important:

1. OpenCart is very simple for both developers and end users;
2. There are many articles on the Internet that can help you understand almost any situation;
3. A complete set of documentation has been written for the system, so that developers can easily find information about every detail of the platform;
4. Customizing the code is very simple, so even a beginner level developer can understand the system code;

Of course, this is just a superficial overview. Now let's look at some of the strengths that OpenCart has over other alternatives.

I note that although the platform has a large number strengths, in this article we will consider only some of them.

Strengths:

1. Several stores in one system;
2. Powerful Tools automatic change image sizes;
3. Built-in error log;
4. Backup and recovery;
5. Multilingual support;
6. Support for a large number of modules.

Install OpenCart on your local machine

First of all, download and install latest version XAMPP to your computer by visiting the Apache Friends website and installing the appropriate version for your system.

Please note that in my examples I am using Windows 7. Download the file and follow the instructions.

Once the installation is complete, start the XAMPP server, and run Apache services and MySQL. Make sure that both services are highlighted with a green background; if this is not the case, restart the services.

Sometimes Apache won't start due to Skype. If you have this problem, try closing Skype and starting the service again.

At this step we should have everything ready to start working. Let's download the latest version of OpenCart from the official website as shown in the screenshot.

Now open XAMPP and click on the Explorer button located on the right. It will open an Explorer window in the directory where XAMPP is installed. There will be a htdocs directory - just open it.

Unzip the OpenCart archive, copy the uploads directory inside htdocs , and rename it (I named the unpacked directory OpencartStore). The second step is to create an empty file called config.php in the admin directory.

Now open your favorite browser and enter http://localhost/OpencartStore.

You will see an installation page that will show you the text License Agreement. Just click on the button Continue(Further).

On the page Pre-Installation(Installation Requirements) You must ensure that all requirements in the section are met PHP Settings and Extensions(PHP settings and extensions).

Mac and Linux users must set the correct access permissions for the listed files and directories (chmod 0775)

Go to phpMyAdmin and create a database. For example, I created a database called storedb. Now fill out the form fields Configuration(Configuration) with values ​​similar to those listed below:

On the next page, make sure your PHP settings are fully consistent minimum requirements OpenCart.

Mac and Linux users need to set appropriate write permissions to these directories (chmod 775).

1. Database driver: MySQL;
2. Database Host: localhost;
3. User: root;
4. Password: ** database user password **;
5. Database Name: storedb (the one you created using phpMyAdmin);
6. Database Prefix (table prefix): (leave as is, oc_).

On the last page, fill in the store administrator information:

1. Username: admin;
2. Password: admin;
3. Email: ( mailing address resource administrator).

Clicking the Continue button will take some time as OpenCart copies the table structure and PHP files. Don't worry about time, wait a couple of seconds and your store will be ready!

Don't forget to delete the "OpencartStore/install" directory after successful installation.

Let's look at the basic file structure

OpenCart has a very simple file structure. Users will not experience any difficulties after familiarizing themselves with the basic purpose of directories.

• admin - stores directories with Models, files of Views and Controllers of the administrative panel, as well as language files and directories;
• catalog - contains files of Models, Views, Controllers and Languages. Also in the View directory you can find some files and directories with templates;
• image - contains banner files, logos, product images and image cache
• system - contains core files of the OpenCart framework. The most important files in this directory are the library and helper files.

We will look at this in the next articles of the series.

Let's start the instructions for installing OpenCart from the very beginning and in order. First, what do you need to install the OpenCart engine. You need a domain and hosting - that’s where you’ll install it. Hosting is disk space on a remote server where your website will actually be located. Domain is the name of your website on the Internet. Both are paid. You also need the engine itself - site files for installation, it's free.

Let's start with a domain name and hosting for your future store. I use the services of a Ukrainian hosting company for my websites, so I will show everything using the example of this hoster. You can choose anyone by googling the queries website hosting, the main thing is that there is support for php and databases; now all self-respecting hosters have it. It’s easier to register a domain and hosting in one place. So, let's begin!

If you assume that you will have one website (your store) and that’s it, the simplest will be enough for you tariff plan for one site, disk space will be enough for you to start with. We order the simplest tariff:

Go through the ordering process and pay for hosting immediately for a year - it will be cheaper. It is more convenient to register a domain after having already paid for hosting, when you get to your admin site control panel, and not during the registration process for a hosting account (may be offered). After paying for hosting, you are taken to the site control panel. All further manipulations are done here. First, let's register Domain name. To do this, go to the Domains Tab and click Register Domain:

Choose domain zone that suits the price and come up with a domain name. You also pay for the domain for a year - domains for less are not paid for. And only when you have registered your domain and hosting, you can start installing OpenCart. Installing the Denver engine on your computer to watch it, and then transferring it to hosting, I don’t see much point in these manipulations, if you need one store for yourself, it will only take longer to fool your head. Do everything right away on the hosting. When the domain is paid, go to the Hosting Tab and select My Sites:

And in the pop-up window that appears, enter the domain name you registered and click the Add button. For example:

When the site is ready it should look like this:

Part of the work is done - the place for your future website is prepared. If you click on a link (domain), the following picture should appear (only with your domain and 15 minutes after registration):

So everything was done correctly! But that is not all. Now you need to make a database for your future store. The OpenCart engine works in such a way that all information (product descriptions, category names, etc.) is stored in a database. That is, you add a product in the admin panel of the store - all this information goes into the database, then it is displayed from the database in the user part of the store. We also create a database right away. On the Hosting tab, click on the Databases link:

A pop-up window will appear. Come up with any arbitrary name and click Create without changing anything else! The database has been created. The password for it is generated automatically. If you did everything correctly, it should be like this (only with your login):

One more step has been completed. But that's not all. We will need to somehow upload the files of our site to the hosting. The most convenient way to do this is through FTP client, about it a little below, but for now you need to immediately create a login and password to access your future site via FTP. On the Hosting tab, as you already understand, all manipulations with the site are done on this tab, click FTP Users:

We come up with a username and password. The result should be like this (only with your login):

That's it! The preparatory work is done - you can start installing OpenCart itself, which will take less time than preparation. Download the engine itself from the official website. Unpack the archive on your computer. After unpacking, the upload folder and files with instructions will appear. It is the contents of the upload folder (this is the site) that need to be uploaded to remote server:

Convenient to use for uploading files free FTP FileZilla client. Be sure to download and install this program for yourself - you will often need it when setting up a website. Launch FileZilla and connect to our server. To do this, enter the FTP access data we recently created:

Leave the port empty and press Fast connection. The left side of the program is our computer, the right is the remote server. Expand the upload folder with the site files on the left, so that all the files of our site are visible. On the right you will have one folder with the name of your site (domain). Let's open it up. There will be a www folder, open it. There will be a file index.html in the www folder - this file needs to be deleted (click right click and the choice to delete), and instead upload the files of our site. To download, hold down left button Use your mouse to select all the site files, then right-click and select Upload to server:

When the site files are uploaded to our hosting, we turn to our site - you can address bar browser, type the domain and press Enter, or go to the site from the hosting control panel. If everything is done correctly, the picture will look like this:

We agree to the license and click Continue. Next, we make sure that the states are green everywhere.

It says that two configuration files are missing (everything else is green). In fact, these files exist, but they are called differently. Through the FTP client we find these files (we see the paths to the files - we go to the corresponding folders already on the server). And rename the files config-dist.php to config.php - right-click on the file and select rename:

One such file is right in the root directory (no need to go anywhere and search). The second one is in the admin folder - you need to open the admin folder and there is a file in it with the exact name - rename it too. It should be like this (and the same in the admin folder):

After renaming, update the installation page. When all states are green, click Continue:

At the next step, fill in the fields with database information. And come up with a username and password:

When all fields are filled in, click Continue:

Ready! We can go to the admin panel, or to our store window. Also, after installation, you need to remove the install folder from the root directory:

Our store is all ready! If these instructions for installing Opencart seemed too complicated, there are instructions not only for installing, but also for setting up this engine.

Ask questions in the comments.