Zen Cart Pre-Installation Checklist

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To be able to appreciate a newly purchased ZenCart, affiliates and the source site itself has an online guide to the shopping cart’s installation. Installation instructions for all Zen Cart versions are basic and easy to follow. But before you even install your purchased ZenCart here are some things you’d have to comply with:

1. What domain will you use? 

For some companies, upgrading their online store into a shopping cart could mean using their existing domain. While most online stores start up with a shopping cart purchase like the ZenCart. Keep in mind though not all domain hosting sites can help you register your cart. Check out the Certified Hosting Sites to see what sites comply with ZenCart’s software requirements.

2. Get reliable FTP software.

The FTP software is a program you need for transferring files between your computer and webserver. Most customers who have had a smooth installation process relied on FileZilla (free), because of positive feedback this program suits as your FTP. Some FTP software to ignore are the SmartFTP and CuteFTP, we’ve had a lot of customers experience problems with both programs. Before you answer yes, please be sure the FTP software you had in mind is not the one that is included with your web hosting services. The FTP service provided by your host is not meant for large file transfer, so errors can occur. 

3. Have a good text editor

The text editor is where you would be able to edit some files in your ZenCart. For starters and non-professional programmer use simple text editing programs are easily available. Editing files with the use of your cPanel or MS Word is not recommended since this is used for more complex changes to files. Here are several Text Editing programs you could choose from: UltraEdit, Notepad++, Crimson Editor for MS. You can use BBedit for Mac while for Linux you can use Kedit.

4. Can you create a MySQL database and user account through your webhosting control panel?

Choosing the right domain web host is needed since this is one of the requirements needed to install the ZenCart. To check you MySQL user account be sure you are able to have these permissions: SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, CREATE, ALTER, INDEX, DROP. Some hosting like the hSphere calls it the dba access.

Reading through this list of items is like gong through a flight plan before taking off. With all these on our desktop or laptop, you can start installing your ZenCart download. Consider this the groundbreaking of your online shopping cart store. The next step would take you even further into exploring your virtual shopping cart.

Goodluck and think Zen.