Getting Started with OpenCart

In this article we will walk you through the first steps you should take after successfully installing OpenCart and how to configure the settings in OpenCart from general settings, to modifying default pages, creating new pages and much more.

OpenCart General Settings

After successfully installing OpenCart, one of the first steps to launching your eCommerce store will be to configure your store’s general settings and contact information. These settings will include your store name, owner, address, and contact information.

To do so, log into your OpenCart admin area and navigate to System -> Settings -> Select the blue edit icon next to your store name and you will be redirected to your stores settings area.

If you are using OpenCart 3.0, you should now be in your settings area under the General tab. The meta fields (meta title, meta description and meta tag keywords) represent your SEO settings. These are what search engines will show when you rank for certain keywords.

From the Store tab, you will be able to configure the following settings:

• Store Name
• Store Owner
• The physical address of your company or physical store
• Store Geo Location
• The stores contact e-mail address
• Company phone number

If your store operates during certain hours, you can insert those for your customers to see in the field called Opening Times. You also have the option to specify any additional details you’d like your customers to see. For example, if you don’t allow checks and want to communicate that with your customers, this would be the perfect place.

You can change the OpenCart image by clicking on the image icon and proceed with the edit button. This will allow you to upload an image to your store from your local computer or choose an existing photo already uploaded to your store.

Once you have configured your stores general settings, click the blue Save button at the top right corner of your OpenCart admin area.

OpenCart Localization Settings

With the localization settings of OpenCart, you can configure your store’s geo settings including your store’s country, region, language, and currency. To access the localization settings, log into your OpenCart admin area and navigate to: System -> Settings -> Select the edit icon next to your store -> click on the Local tab

From this page, you will be able to configure various settings related to your eCommerce store.

To ensure your customers fully understand your products and to maximize conversions, you will want to ensure the currency and weight class is set correctly.

Once you have completed your companies geographic profile click the Save button located at the top right corner of the OpenCart admin area.

OpenCart Email & SMTP Settings

On a new installation the default email settings will be set to use the servers email (or local / PHP mail). While this is OK you can increase email reliability and deliverability by using an SMTP provider such as PostMark.

To access your stores email settings, log into the OpenCart admin area and navigate to System -> Settings -> Click the blue edit icon next to your store name -> Mail

To begin using SMTP select the option SMTP from the Mail Engine drop down menu and set the following fields:

• SMTP Hostname – The hostname provided by your SMTP provider. For example, with postmark the SMTP hostname would be smtp.postmarkapp.com
• SMTP Username – Enter the username which would be provided by your SMTP provider.
• SMTP Password – Just like the username, enter the password provided by your SMTP provider.
• SMTP Port – The default port is 25 though please consult your SMTP provider to ensure you’re using a port they support.

You do not need to use an SMTP provider if you do not wish to do so. By leaving the Mail Engine set to Mail, emails from your store will work with the emails coming from the hosting providers server.

If you are not using SMTP, you do not need to fill in any of the SMTP settings referenced above.

In your mail settings page, you will also be able to specify the type of alerts you will receive. You can consider these alerts as notifications for certain actions performed throughout your store.

• Register – This option will send you an email whenever a new customer registers on your website (this only notifies you of a new registration and not necessarily a new order).
• Affiliate – This option will notify you when a new affiliate has registered to your eCommerce store.
• Orders – This will send you a notification email for each new order in your OpenCart store.
• Reviews – With this option enabled, you will receive an email notification for any new customer reviews that has been submitted through your store.

The Additional Alert Email will allow you to set additional email addresses to receive the alerts or notifications selected in the previous step. You can also add multiple email addresses by separating with them a comma, as shown in the picture below.

OpenCart Search Engine Friendly URLs

Search engine friendly URLs, also commonly known as SEO URLs or Pretty URLs, converts the default URL for a page and make them more readable and understandable to both humans and search engines.

For example, using search engine friendly URLs, you are able to change the default page paths from:

https://mydomain.com/index.php?route=product/category&path=10

to their search engine friendly equilivant:

https://mydomain.com/smart-phone

To change your store to use these friendly URLs, you will need to be on a hosting provider which supports mod_rewrite. Mod_rewrite is a rule based rewriting engine, these rewriting rules are available in the OpenCart .htaccess file.

Did you know our Shared Hosting platform includes mod_rewrite as standard?

Activating search engine friendly URLs can be done in 2 steps which has been outlined below.

• Step 1 – Setup the .htaccess file in your hosting control panel
• Step 2 – Activate the search engine friendly URLs within your OpenCart admin area

Step 1 – Setup the .htaccess file in your hosting control panel

When you install OpenCart a file called htaccess.txt should be created in your installations directory. This file contains all of the necessary rules for the mod_rewrite module to convert your URLs to pretty URLs.

Log into your cPanel control panel and search for the File Manager icon and click this icon to open it.

Once your file manager has been opened, double click the public_html directory to access the root of your website. Locate the htaccess.txt file and rename it to .htaccess

Be mindful of the prefixing . on the .htaccess file. This is required for the files rules to take effect on your store.

Step 2 – Activate the search engine friendly URLs within your OpenCart admin area

With the above file now correctly set to .htaccess, log back into your OpenCart admin area and navigate to: System -> Settings -> Click the blue icon next to your store -> Server.

Once in the Server tab you should be able to see an option called Use SEO URLs which by default is set to No. Change this by clicking on Yes and save your changes by clicking on the blue save button located at the top right corner of your OpenCart admin area.

We highly recommend browsing through a few pages on your website as if the SEO friendly URLs are not working correctly, pages on your eCommerce store will not be accessible. If you find this to be the case double check you have the .htaccess file named correctly.

Should you still experience any issues our friendly expert support team will be happy to assist you.

OpenCart Enable SSL

SSL (or Secure Sockets Layer) is a standard security technology used to encrypt the connection between the browser and the hosting server on which your website is hosted. You can recognize a website with an SSL certificate with a padlock in the browser address using the https:// protocol.

Having the SSL certificate for your website improves your visitors’ trust and confidence in your company. It is this boost in confidence that can help you improve your conversion rate.

Installing OpenCart for the https:// protocol without a valid SSL certificate could affect your website accessibility due to browsers showing a security warning error to your visitors.

Setting your store to use SSL HTTPS can be done by completing the 3 steps outlined below:

• Step 1 – Configure your config.php to set HTTPS URLs
• Step 2 – Enable SSL via the Admin area
• Step 3 – Force OpenCart to use HTTPS

Step 1 – Configure your config.php to set HTTPS URLs

Before enabling the SSL support in your OpenCart admin dashboard, you will need to edit the two configuration files of your OpenCart installation. You will need to modify two instances of a file called config.php, and those are located under root directory of your OpenCart application and in the admin folder:

public_html/your-opencart-directory/config.php
public_html/your-opencart-directory/admin/config.php

Log into your cPanel control panel and click on the File Manager icon. Once the File Manager has been opened, navigate to the above directories and open each config.php file.

Once the files are open in your file manager, locate the following section in each file:

// HTTPS
define('HTTPS_SERVER', 'http://hostdashtutorials.com/opencart/');

Once you have located this line, change the http:// to https://. For example, the above would end up being:

// HTTPS
define('HTTPS_SERVER', 'https://hostdashtutorials.com/opencart/');

Once you have made the change, click on the blue Save Changes button located at the top right corner of the file editor.

Step 2 – Enable SSL via the Admin area

Next, you will want to activate the SSL support via the OpenCart admin dashboard. You can do so by logging in to your OpenCart admin panel and navigate to: System -> Settings -> Select the blue edit icon next to your stores name -> Server

Once you are on the Server tab, you should see a Security section, with the first option in this section being called Use SSL, which by default is set to no. Change this by clicking the Yes button and then save the changes by clicking the blue save button located at the top right corner of your OpenCart admin area.

At this point, your registration, checkout, and other pages where sensitive information is submitted will be accessible only via HTTPS.

Step 3 – Force OpenCart to use HTTPS

By default, when you enable SSL in the OpenCart admin area, it will only force HTTPS on pages where sensitive data is being transmitted, such as the registration and checkout pages. If you prefer, you can force OpenCart to use HTTPS on every page.

To do this, you will need to change the two config.php files again (the two files adjusted in step one). In your cPanel file manager open the two config.php files and look for the HTTP config:

// HTTP
define('HTTP_SERVER', 'http://hostdashtutorials.com/opencart/');

By changing http:// to https:// you will force HTTPS across every page in your OpenCart eCommerce store. In the above example, the end result will end up being:

// HTTPS
define('HTTPS_SERVER', 'https://hostdashtutorials.com/opencart/');

OpenCart Modifying Default Pages

To make getting started with OpenCart as easy as possible, they provide several default pages with sample data that can easily be modified within the admin area dashboard.

The default pages includes an About Us page, Delivery Information page, Privacy Policy page, and Terms of Service page. These can be modified by logging into your OpenCart admin area and navigating to Catalog -> Information.

Once on this page, find the page you would like to modify and click the blue edit icon next to it.

From the edit page, you will be able to customize the page to your desire, from the content to the SEO tags and more.

Under the General tab you will be able to configure the following fields:

• Information Title – This is the title that will appear on the page itself when a customer visits the page.
• Description – The description acts as the page body and is the content the user will see when they open the page. For example, if you are modifying your Delivery Information page, you would want to include all of the delivery terms in this box.
• Meta Tag Title – The meta tag title will appear as the page title in search engine results and the users browser tab.
• Meta Tag Description – As the title tag, this is a short description of the page and will appear in search engine results. You’d generally want to cover a short story about your company here.

Under the Data tab you will be able to configure the following fields:

• Stores – OpenCart allows you to share pages between multiple stores, if you want your page to appear across multiple stores select all of them here otherwise select the individual stores you’d like this page to appear on.
• Bottom – If this setting is enabled, a link to this page will appear in the footer of all the stores you have the page enabled on. If you deselect this option, the page will still be valid though no link will be automatically generated in the footer.
• Status – The status will determine if the page can be accessed by your potential customers. If the page has been disabled it won’t be accessible whereas if it has been enabled your audience will be able to access the page.
• Sort Order – The Sort Order option will determine where links will appear in the footer of your website. For example, setting a page to have a Sort Order of 1 will make it the first link to appear in the footer links section of your website.

When you are ready with the page settings, click the blue save button located at the top right corner of your OpenCart admin area.

OpenCart How to Add New Pages

Like with the default pages described above, OpenCart provides you with the ability to add new static pages to your store easily. When creating a new page, you will have the option to automatically place a link in your website’s footer or only have it accessible from a URL. You can use this feature to create any custom page you like, such as a promotions page.

If you would like to modify an existing page instead of creating a new page, please read our tutorial on how to edit OpenCart’s default pages.

To create a new page log into your OpenCart admin area and navigate to Catalog -> Information

You should now see a list of the static pages across your eCommerce store. To create a new page click on the blue + button at the top right corner of the page, as shown below.

You should now be presented with a form which would enable you to create your custom page.

Under the General tab you will be able to configure the following fields:

• Information Title – Enter your new page’s name here, this title will be shown at the top of the page to anyone who visits your page.
• Description – The description box will serve as the body content of the page. For example, if you are creating a page to feature your promotions you would want to enter all of the promotion details here.

You can add HTML code for the page by clicking on the code view button at the top of the text box. You can find this by clicking the button called: </>

• Meta Tag Title – The meta tag title will appear as the page title in search engine results and the users browser tab.
• Meta Tag Description – As the title tag, this is a short description of the page and will appear in search engine results. You’d generally want to cover a short story about your company here.

Under the Data tab you will be able to configure the following fields:

• Stores – OpenCart allows you to share pages between multiple stores, if you want your page to appear across multiple stores select all of them here otherwise select the individual stores you’d like this page to appear on.
• Bottom – If this setting is enabled, a link to this page will appear in the footer of all the stores you have the page enabled on. If you deselect this option, the page will still be valid though no link will be automatically generated in the footer.
• Status – The status will determine if the page can be accessed by your potential customers. If the page has been disabled it won’t be accessible whereas if it has been enabled your audience will be able to access the page.

While you are drafting your OpenCart page you can leave this to Disabled and save the changes at the top right corner of your admin area to prevent your changes being from lost.

• Sort Order – The Sort Order option will determine where links will appear in the footer of your website. For example, setting a page to have a Sort Order of 1 will make it the first link to appear in the footer links section of your website.

When you have completed your new page configuration you can save it by clicking the blue save button located at the top right corner of your OpenCart admin area.