osCommerce Community Support Forums: geoffreywalton - Viewing Profile

IMPORTANT SECURITY PATCH FOR EXISTING AND NEW SITES (18/07/90). Follow the steps outlined at SECURITY

Hi

You may have noticed I answer quite a lot of questions on the forum, or I did when I wrote this, so first a plea, post your questions in the forum or see the comments in my Personal Statement.

Most of the answers I give can be found by searching the forum, so whenever you get stuck, use google and use a search term like

site:forums.oscommerce.com xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

in the google search box. Or read this link A guide to searching the forums/contributions

Here are some links to answers and other info I have found useful to install RC2A sites, credit must go to the authors all I have done is consolidate them into one place. If you find others let me know and I'll add them in.

Starting Out

The first one is a roadmap for newbies by lindsayanng which gives a good overview of osc.

File relationships diagram :- here

Basic Installation steps

If you want to install osc and are stuck

1. Create a blank database via your web hosting control panel. Each control panel is different and your host's help desk or faqs should be able to help
2. Download the latest osCommerce 2.2 RC2A zip file from the downloads section of www.oscommerce.com to your pc, unzip it. You will use the 'catalog' folder but it is worth browsing through the others.
3. If you want your shop's URL to be www.yourdomain.com/catalog then upload the whole of the catalog folder to the root directory of your website via FTP. If you want the site to be available at www.yourdomain.com then just upload all of the contents of the catalog folder to the root directory of your website, but not the folder itself.
4. Make sure that the permissions on all of the folders are set to 755, and if that does not work then set them to 777 and consider chaging host as you will get hacked. Make sure that the includes/configure.php file and the admin/includes/configure.php file are set to 777. These need to be restricted later.
5. Then go to www.yourdomain.com/catalog/install or www.yourdomain.com/install and follow the on-line install procedure. You will be prompted to enter various pieces of information.
5a. Set DB Server to 'localhost', If that doesn't work there may be different db server settings which your host might have told you or it is somewhere on the control panel after you have created the db e.g. db_name.db.999999.hostedserver.
com
5.b Your db user name and password (for mysql access) should have been provided to you by your web hosting company but you might have created and new name and password in step 1.
5.c The name of the database you should know - because you just set it up.
5.d Do not enable SSL unless you already have it installed or intend to shortly, elect to store sessions in the database and not files (untick the box), and do not enable persistent connections.
6. After the install is complete create a folder called 'backups' inside the 'admin' folder (via FTP), and delete the install folder.
6a. IMPORTANT STEP FOR EXISTING AND NEW SITES (18/07/90). Follow the steps outlined at SECURITY.
7. Reset permissions on the two configure.php files to 644, 444, or 400 depending on your server setup.
8. Password Protect your 'admin' folder using the Password Protect feature in your web hosting control panel.

Getting A Basic Understanding

Once you have it installed the first 2 threads in the installation forum covers how to do loads of basic things as does this one :-

Also the documentation that comes with the download of your version of osc will be a good first stop or if it is not on your server, download a new copy of your version and read that

Video Tutorials and a free template editor, not to mention a tutorial about setting up your PC as a (XAMPP) server so you can test your changes before uploading them to your live site.

The knowledgebase on this site can be read on-line or a copy downloaded, unfortunately the screen shots are for the V3 and but most of it still applies to rc2a.

The configuration files are also a dark pit and A guide to the configure.php files sheds some light on them and their contents.

If you want to change colours and box styles the Knowledgebase on stylesheet is a good place to start.

When you start to get more technical and want to create links, you should read What is the osCsid & why you must not loose it.

And for those wanting to install SSL a little SSL Implementation Help goes a long way.

But the code documentation here is very useful, wiki.oscdox.com, once you have drilled down the search tool on the right is invaluable. The rest of the site is not finished but good in parts.

Try skim reading these 2 threads as well:

UML or ER diagram of OsCommerce database
Post 2 of Hacked (or bug) - someone in database or backend

How to add products to your store.

You can either do this one product at a time through the shop admin or install a contribution to take data from a csv file and upload en-mass. The best contribution to do this is Easy Populate.

Now if you want someone to take a file given to you by your supplier and automate the reformatting ot it so it can be imported using EP I know just the person to do this ......

Host has Upgraded your Server to MySQL5.

If your host has recently upgraded to mysql5 then you need to sort out LEFT JOINS

How to update to RC2A and sort out PHP5/MySQL5 upgrade problems.

Images

IStockPhoto
http://us.fotolia.com/.
BigStockPhoto
magictoolbox
colour scheme generator

Buttons/icons

dryicons.com/
qds-team
www.oscbuttons.com/
www.advancewebsoft.com

Templates

How to upgrade a template, good start if you ignore the flame war.

How To Run SQL.

By now you might be trying to install contributions and are stuck on how to "run" the SQL

1) Go to your ISPs admin area for your site.
2) Click on the icon for Database administration or Mysql, then find the link for phpmyadmin, it might be hidden away at the bottom but not on all admin sites. If you can’t find this, please consult your ISP's help desk. You might have to click on Manage Database or some link like that.
3) In some cases, you may have to choose which database your OSC tables are located on. If this is the case, please choose using the dropdown box.
4) Click on "SQL" on the navigation bar.
5) Enter/paste your SQL in the textbox provided or, if you have a file containing the sql commands, click on Import and follow the on screen prompts.
6) For both methods click "Go"..
7) If all goes well, your SQL query will run successfully.

For another explanation on running sql.

Or for a contribution to allow you to run SQL Script from Admin.

Whilst we are on the subject of MySQL, this link will solve most MySQL5/Left Join/1054 errors when your host upgrades to mysql5 without telling you.

UK Your Site

For a comprehensive way of changing EVERYTHING to UK(UK-Based: Default osCommerce Installation).

Date formatting: UK-Based osCommerce 2.2 & Date of Birth PullDown

Another couple of threads might be of interest

UK Royal Mail & Overseas Shipping Methods (UK & Overseas Postage Methods).
Single Country on Registration (Only if you plan to post to UK only! Removing Country Selection on Register.)

Payment

Read this link before processing Credit Card data on your site.

Do not allow your customers to enter cc details on any OSC screen unless you are PCI compliant, use a merchant account and accept cc details on their system.

Use a contribution such as PayPal, Protx etc.
PaypalBasic Guide and PP Guide and PP Standard
How to secure your site.

Search Engine Optimisation

Google SEO Starter-guide

Comparison of SEO contibutions.

- Header Tags SEO V 3.1.2
- Ultimate SEO URLs - 2.1d
- Sitemap SEO
- All Products SEO
- Googlebase
- Updated Spiders file
- Robots file
- SID killer
- SEO Assistant

How to Speed Up Your site.

Apart from upgrade to a faster server :-)

A Store Speed Optimization in Progress, Step by step from a vanilla install!
An example of how to debug a nasty query problem
Find slow queries

Sometimes the images you have on your site are massive and you could do with making the smaller, try this to Reduce Image Size.

Enjoy

Geoffrey