If you are starting an online shop and are looking for an ecommerce CMS to run your store, AbanteCart is a free shopping cart and open source software that you can use. It is easy to set up and use and comes with extensions to extend its functionality.
In this article you will learn how to install, set up and use AbanteCart on Ubuntu.
Requirements
As AbanteCart requires a server to reside on, we will assume that you already have a Ubuntu server with the following applications installed:
- Apache2
- MySQL
- PHP (at least 5.3)
Setting up database
To get started, we will create a database for AbanteCart to store its data.
1. Assuming that you have already SSH to your Ubuntu server, log into MySQL using the command:
mysql -u root -p
You will need to enter mysql root password when prompted.
2. Type in the following commands to create a “abantecart” database:
CREATE DATABASE abantecart;
3. After successfully creating the database, we will then create its user and grant the user all the privileges to the database. We will create a username and password and then flush the privileges using the commands below. You can use a password of your choice.
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON `abantecart`.* TO 'abantecart'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'yourpassword'; FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
4. Use the \q or exit command to exit from the MySQL console.
Installing AbanteCart
AbanteCart is available for download from the official download site. We are however going to use the commands below to download its compressed file and extract it using the terminal:
wget -c https://github.com/abantecart/abantecart-src/archive/master.zip -O abantecart.zip sudo apt-get -y install unzip unzip abantecart.zip
Navigate to the directory
cd abante-src-masterand change “public_html” to “abantecart.”
mv public_html abantecartTransfer the “abantecart” folder to the “/var/www” directory (or where your server document root resides).
sudo mv abantecart /var/www/
Finally, change the “abantecart” directory ownership to allow “www-data” group and user.
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/abantecart
Configuration
The first step in configuration is to set up Apache virtual host for AbanteCart. To do that we are going to create a new configuration file called “abantecart.conf” in the “/etc/apache2/sites-available/” directory. You can do this using your favorite text editor. (In this case we’ll use “nano.”)
sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/abantecart.conf
Add the contents below.
<VirtualHost *:80> ServerName abantecart.exampleserver.xyz DocumentRoot /var/www/abantecart <Directory /var/www/abantecart> Options -Indexes +FollowSymLinks +MultiViews AllowOverride All Required all granted </Directory> ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/abantecart.exampleserver.xyz-error.log CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/abantecart.exampleserver.xyz-access.log combined </VirtualHost>
You can change the test URL “abantecart.exampleserver.xyz” to the actual domain name that you will be using for AbanteCart.
With the setup complete, open the browser and visit the domain name used in the configuration file above. This will open the setup wizard for AbanteCart, starting with the licensing agreement.
Agreeing to the license terms and clicking on “Continue” takes us to another page that validates on compatibility. If you followed the above steps correctly, you should be able to see a page that is similar to the one below. Click on the “Continue” button.
The next step involves the configuration of the database and the admin section. The configurations include:
- Select MySQLi as the database driver. The username, password, and database name are the ones that we set up earlier.
- In the admin section add an alphanumeric key. This key is used for the admin panel location.
- Set up the admin credentials by selecting a username, password and confirming the password.
- The setup has an option that loads demo data for you. Load this data for the installation. Click the Continue button when done.
The installation is now completed. Click on “Continue” to be taken to the following page.
We can then visit the online shop loaded with demo data or go to the control panel. Visiting the shop takes me to the following page.
Choosing the admin panel will ask you for the login credentials and then take you through a startup wizard where you can set the shop name and title, Google Analytics and upload a logo for the shop. Follow this wizard and you will get to the admin panel, a page similar to the following image:
Conclusion
With the advancement of technology, setting up an online store is much easier now and does not need a lot of technical knowledge, especially with applications like AbanteCart. You can now start your online shop and customize it to look exactly the way you want it to.
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