How to Install osCommerce for Your Online Store

OsCommerce is an open source, online shopping cart application. It is a comprehensive e-commerce store application that offers both catalog front-end and back-end solutions. With osCommerce, you can set up, run and maintain a fully functional ecommerce store and shopping cart with no fees or costs at all. This application is written in PHP, and is thus compatible with MySQL databases. It is also compatible with most web browsers. Installing osCommerce is a relatively easy process. Read on to learn how.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Web-hosting server with an integrated control panel such as cPanel.
• OsCommerce installation package.

I

1. 
   Log in to your cPanel account and click on the Fantastico link.

   Go to the official osCommerce website (see Resources below), and download the osCommerce installation package. Log in to your Web-host cPanel account. Click on the Fantastico link.

2. 
   osCommerce

   Select osCommerce, which is under the E-Commerce link. When prompted, fill out the form with the requested information.

3. 
   Installing osCommerce

   Decide whether to install osCommerce on your domain or in the root directory. If you choose to install it on your domain, then enter the domain name in the "Install on Domain" field. Alternatively, leave the "Install on Directory" field blank if you intend to install it in the root directory.

4. Go to the "Admin Access Data" section. Here, enter the required information such as your username and password, your store name, email address and the store owner's name.

5. Move on to the "When Clients Register" section. Make a selection as to whether you want SSL encryption to be used and whether or not your store prices will include taxes.

6. Indicate whether your customers will be required to enter personal information such as their, gender, birth date, city or state, company name and the like. You can always change any of the options you select later on.

7. 
   osCommerce: Verify your information and then click

   Click Install once you have entered all the required information. This will open the "Confirm information" page. Verify that all the information you entered is accurate, and then click Finish Installation. With osCommerce is installed, you can now start building your store!

Tips & Warnings

• OsCommerce is comparable Joomla's Virtuemart component because it offers similar features such as tax inclusion, multilingual support, unlimited categories and product listings, multiple shipping options and multiple payment methods such as PayPal, Authorize.net, 2Checkout as well as credit cards.
• One of the distinctive features of osCommerce is the integrated UPS shipping options.

Resources

• Download osCommerce