How to Install Zen Cart E-commerce Shopping Store in Linux

Zen Cart is a PHP-based software system. It is used as E-Commerce shopping store. It basically uses MySQL database for a smooth operational process. As it is made with PHP, HTML is another requirement for the implementation of Zen Cart. Zen Cart is often known as the “Art of E-Commerce”. Some features of Zen Cart is that it is completely open-source in nature. This means it is completely free. Also, it has user-friendly interfaces. Another feature of Zen Cart is that support is available in a wide range of languages. For these reasons Zen Cart is popular. It is made with the help of shop owners. A team of programmers worked with the shop owner’s team & implemented this famous software. Some pre-requisites are present while installing Zen Cart in the machine. They are Apache, MySQL, PHP & its module. This softwares need to be installed on the machine previously.

Features of Zen Cart

• Zen Cart helps the user to customize their E-Commerce cart whenever needed. For this purpose may be some source code modification will be needed. But that is not that much of difficult to do.
• Zen Cart comes with various payment gateways. The payment gateways are in build with the Zen Cart. Hence, it helps to accept the order amount from every source.
• Zen Cart provides a feature to provide a customize name of the domain. Users will be able to configure the domain.

Installation & Configuration of Zen Cart in Linux

Follow the below steps to install and configure Zen Cart in Linux.

Step 1: At first, we have to open the terminal Linux. Then we have to execute the following command. This command will help to download the .zip file of the Zen Cart. This will take some time. We have to wait till the downloading is completed.

wget https://nchc.dl.sourceforge.net/project/zencart/CURRENT%20-%20Zen%20Cart%201.5.x%20Series/zen-cart-v1.5.6a-01042019.zip

 

Step 2: Then we have to unzip the downloaded zip file. For that purpose, we need to execute the following command. This command will unzip the .zip folder.

unzip zen-cart-v1.5.6a-01042019.zip

 

Step 3: We have to wait till the unzip is completed.

 

Step 4: After the extraction of the zip file is completed, we have to move the Zen Cart to the Apache server. For that purpose, we have to execute the below command. This will move the Zen Cart. Though this command will not provide any output for performing this operation.

mv zen-cart-v1.5.6a-01042019 /var/www/zen

 

Step 5: Then We have to run three commands. This command will do configuration in the Apache server. As we are going to insert the Zen Server in the Apache server. That is why this modification is needed. For that purpose, we have to run the following commands.

chown -R www-data.www-data /var/www/zen
chmod -R 755 /var/www/zen
vim /etc/apache2/sites-available/zen.conf

 

Step 6: After executing the above three commands, a new terminal window will open. There we have to provide our server name. As per the user’s choice they can change the server name. After writing the whole document just press Enter. This will close that window & it will return back to the terminal of the Linux.

<VIrtualhost *:80>
              Servername www.linux.com
              documentroot /var/www/zen
<directory /var/www/zen>
allowoverride all
allow from all
</directory>
</virtualhost>

 

Note: Please don’t make any changes to any other part other than Servername. Users can change the Servername as per their choice. But changing in other portion may lead unsuccessful configuration of Zen Cart.

Step 7: Now, we have to disable the existing Apache Server. otherwise, the Zen Server will not able to work. For this purpose, we need to run the below command. This command will disable the Apache Server.

a2dissite 000-default.conf

 

Step 8: After executing the above step, we have to start the Zen Cart Server. For starting the Zen Cart Server we need to run the following command. This command will start the Zen Cart Server in Apache.

a2ensite zen.conf

 

Step 9: After that, we have to activate the new changes that we have done with the Apache server. For this case, we need to execute the following command. This command will start activation of the new make changes with Apache.

a2enmod rewrite

 

Step 10: Though it is not so important, it is a good practice to restart any application where we have made changes. That is why we prefer to restart the Apache. For restarting the Apache, we need to execute the below-mentioned command. This command will not display any output. It will take some time to restart the Apache.

systemctl restart apache2

 

Step 11: Now, we have done the installation & configuration of Zen Cart. Now it is time to open our Zen Cart server. For that, we have opened our desired browser. There we have to search with our Servername. In this case, Servername is “www.linux.com”. If we made the changes in configuration successfully, then it will redirect to the Zen Cart home page. Hence, we have successfully completed the installation & configuration of Zen Cart.