Putting OSCommerce to Work

Published on February 14, 2009 by Mr nCoded · No Comments

If you have a new install of OS Commerce, or even a previously setup one, and you are now looking for pointers and advice in order to make your shop more effective, then read on! OS-Commerce is one of more simpler Open source applications for doing E-Commerce and yet is still very effective for selling online.

The main reason that OS Commerce is simple to use and modify is based on the fact that it has been built using procedural PHP 4 (whereas nowadays most applications such as Magento are built using object oriented PHP 5 which is far more complex).

If you are an owner or manager then you may be wondering what exactly is procedural PHP 4? In some respects this does not matter apart from the fact that there are far more procedural PHP 4 programmers around than OO PHP 5 (which is currently very in demand with high wages). Additionally if you are a programmer (in any language) then you should be able to tell the main constructs e.g. sequence, selection, and iteration. This of course holds for most common languages including Javascript, Java, ASP, VB, and others.

Okay so we explained the logic of using OS Commerce to build your new E Commerce shop, hopefully! What we shall do now is start from the ground upwards so that you can get an idea of the best way to set this up either from scratch, via a control panel, or to modify an existing install.

If you are using a control panel such as Plesk or CPanel then all you will need to do is follow the on-screen instructions, apart from the step when it requires to enter the database user and user password. Just follow the same instructions as we give for the installation from scratch.

If you already have a pre-installed version of OS-Commerce (by any method) then you can ignore all these parts and move straight on to the section: Configuration of OS-Commerce.

Installation of OS Commerce

In order to install OS-Commerce, or in-deed most Open source applications, you will need to provide a database (table) setup and ready to be used by the application. To put it simply, all the information (customers, products, etc) that is used by the application will be saved into the database and hence this is critical to the running of OS-Commerce.

Additionally what you will also require are the actual files that make up the application (usually in the many thousands). In most cases including OS-Commerce you will download these files as a Zip or Rar file. If you have not come across .rar files before then note that they are similar to .Zip files.

If you have not come across either, then all you need to know is that compressed (.rar or .zip) files are nothing more than all the files squashed together to make the final size of the files (much) smaller. If you don’t currently have an application that will open these files then feel free to download the excellent (free) 7 Zip

>> 7 Zip Compression

Once you have the compressed file (.zip or .rar) then you will need to expand it (using an application such as 7Zip) however you now have 2 choices where to expand it. You can either expand it on your desktop (locally) and then upload all the files, or upload the compressed file and then expand it in place.

Personally I would upload the compressed file and then expand it in place. The reason that I say this is because there are few problems that can happen when using the other method. If you are having issues trying to upload all the many files then take a read to see if any of these problems seem to be affecting you issue.

The first problem that can happen is that the server (or web hosting space) that you are using has restricted the number of files that can be viewed (and even uploaded). The problem normally goes as follows. You select all the files and then start to upload them, however before they finish you notice that some of the files didn’t upload. The second problem is that you have uploaded all the files correctly, however when you try and view them you notice that some of them are missing.

Another problem of uploading individual files is the fact that it will take far longer; Now I am not saying this is the wrong thing to do as even I may some-times upload files individually (for a specific reason), however it is something that you should definitely be aware of; the alternative method that is.

The best or rather quickest method is to upload the compressed file, expand it using the server (either the control panel or via UNIX commands), and then (if it is not in the correct place) to move it; obviously it makes more sense to move it to the correct location before you expand it, something which cannot always be done.

So no matter which method you have followed, you will now have the files in place. If you used the control panel to do the installation then all this is really has done is moved the correct files into the correct location; Please note that often the files that have been installed by the control panel may be out of date.

Now you will need to setup the database user and user password; more to follow.