OsCommerce www.oscommerce.com is an open source online e-commerce software solution that is available for free under the GNU General Public License. osCommerce was started in March 2000 in Germany by project founder and leader Herald Ponce de Leon. Every year the members of the community join forces in designing more add-on features to increase the feasibility and functionality in all areas of development. The new version 3.0 is planned to hit the market and it will have a template feature that will allow users to create a more unique layout for their site.
OsCommerce was designed with a rich set of out of the box online shopping cart functionality that allows store owners to setup, run, and maintain their online stores with minimum effort, and no costs, fees, or limitations involved. This software was designed for ease of install and usability for any online store owner from newbie to techno king.
Is this software compatible with your server?
OsCommerce can be used on any web server that has PHP and MySQL installed. Most of the web host providers have included this software for a general automatic install from your account control panel or within the Fantastico control panel, depending on which host provider you have gone with. If you do not have the automatic install capability, the osCommerce software is available from main site for downloading and installing manually.
You will need to know where to access your files, usually under the file manager option in your control panel, to FTP your extracted files into the correct folder. You can use this software as a standalone site, meaning you can choose to install in the root directory of your domain, and have the store as you main index; or you can choose to install in a sub directory as an add on, an example being http://www.yoursite.com/store.
Although the oscommerce is not the “ultimate” e-commerce solution, it is by no means “basic”; with the capabilities of customizing to meet the specific needs of ones own business.
Getting your store installed and online
For manual install
If you are downloading and installing the software manually you can obtain the download at http://www.oscommerce.com/solutions/downloads Save the folder to your desktop as you will not need to upload the entire thing for installation purposes. When it is finished, it is a zip folder, so you will need to unzip the folder. If you are using Windows XP you can just right click on the folder and choose the unzip option. Often times if you just double click the folder it will unzip as well.
Once you have extracted the files into a new folder on your desktop, open it up and take a look at it. You will be needing the folder named catalog to FTP to your server.
You will want to transfer/upload your extracted oscommerce folder from your desktop to your hosting account. You will need an FTP client in order to do this. An FTP client enables you to transfer large amounts of files quickly and directly into where you would like it to be on your hosting server without any long time manual hassles of uploading each file alone. I find Filezilla is quite an easy to use FTP client.
Once you have entered you host address, username, and password (all things that should have been in your welcome email when you signed up with your hosting account), the FTP client connects your computer directly to your server.
Depending on what hosting company you are with, your files might be listed under www. or public-html. Drag the oscommerce folder with your mouse to the left hand side and drop it in the folder on your right (shop)
Next you will need to create a MySQL database. You can find the icon in your control panel like the following picture below:
In order to create a new database all you need to do is enter the desired name for the database in the New Database field, then click the [Create Database] button. You will also have to create a username; this is so you will have access to the database. You should see the option underneath for name and password.
Then go to the next option and make sure you add the username to your database, and checking to make sure all privileges are given.
Next you will need to open a new browser and type in http://yourserver/catalog/install/ to get to the configurations. You will need to fill in the information for your database server (local host), username, and password, and the database name you created.
You may need to set permissions on /catalog/includes/configure.php to 777 from within your control panel if you find you are getting security warnings.
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