Tag: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

OpenCart is a free open source ecommerce platform for online merchants. OpenCart provides a professional and reliable foundation from which to build a successful online store. In this tutorial we will learn you how to install OpenCart on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo’ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step by step installation OpenCart on a Ubuntu 18.04 (Bionic Beaver) server.

Install OpenCart on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

Step 1. First make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

Step 2. Install LAMP (Linux, Apache, MariaDB and PHP) server.

A Ubuntu 18.04 LAMP server is required. If you do not have LAMP installed, you can follow our guide here. Also install all required PHP modules:

apt-get install php7.1-cli php7.1-mbstring php7.1-gd php7.1-opcache php7.1-mysql php7.1-json php7.1-mcrypt php7.1-xml php7.1-curl

Step 3. Download OpenCart

First thing to do is to go to OpenCart’s download page and download the latest stable version of OpenCart:

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/html/example.com
cd /tmp
wget https://github.com/opencart/opencart/releases/download/3.0.3.1/opencart-3.0.3.1.zip
unzip opencart-*.zip
sudo mv /tmp/upload/* /var/www/html/example.com/

Next, copy the configurations files:

sudo cp /var/www/html/example.com/{config-dist.php,config.php}
sudo cp /var/www/html/example.com/admin/{config-dist.php,config.php}

We will need to change some folders permissions:

sudo chown -R www-data: /var/www/html

Step 4. Configuring MariaDB for OpenCart.

By default, MariaDB is not hardened. You can secure MariaDB using the mysql_secure_installation script. You should read and below each steps carefully which will set root password, remove anonymous users, disallow remote root login, and remove the test database and access to secure MariaDB.

mysql_secure_installation

Configure it like this:

- Set root password? [Y/n] y
- Remove anonymous users? [Y/n] y
- Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n] y
- Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n] y
- Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n] y

Next we will need to log in to the MariaDB console and create a database for the OpenCart. Run the following command:

mysql -u root -p

This will prompt you for a password, so enter your MariaDB root password and hit Enter. Once you are logged in to your database server you need to create a database for OpenCart installation:

MariaDB [(none)]> CREATE DATABASE opencart;
MariaDB [(none)]> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON opencart.* TO 'opencartuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'opencartuser_passwd';
MariaDB [(none)]> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
MariaDB [(none)]> \q

Step 5. Configuring Apache web server for OpenCart.

Create a new virtual host directive in Apache. For example, create a new Apache configuration file named ‘opencart.conf’ on your virtual server:
[/php]
touch /etc/apache2/sites-available/opencart.conf
ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/opencart.conf /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/opencart.conf
nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/opencart.conf
[/php]

Add the following lines:

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin [email protected]
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/example.com
ServerName your-domain.com
ServerAlias www.your-domain.com
<Directory /var/www/html/example.com/>
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
</Directory>
ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/your-domain.com-error_log
CustomLog /var/log/apache2/your-domain.com-access_log common

Save and close the file. Restart the apache service for the changes to take effects:

sudo a2ensite magento.conf
sudo a2enmod rewrite
sudo systemctl restart apache2

Step 6. Accessing OpenCart.

OpenCart will be available on HTTP port 80 by default. Open your favorite browser and navigate to http://your-domain.com/ or http://server-ip and complete the required the steps to finish the installation. If you are using a firewall, please open port 80 to enable access to the control panel.

Congratulation’s! You have successfully installed OpenCart. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing OpenCart e-commerce on Ubuntu 18.04 systems. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you to check the official OpenCart website.