How to Install X-Cart 5 on CentOS 8

X-Cart is an extremely flexible open-source eCommerce platform with tons of features and integrations. This guide describes the process of installing X-Cart 5 on an Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Vultr instance, using Nginx as the web server and MySQL as the database server.

Requirements

• PHP version 7.2 or higher
• PHP extensions: pdo, phar, mysql, mbstring, curl
• MySQL version 5.7.7 or higher or MariaDB equivalent
• Nginx

Before you begin

Check the CentOS version.

cat /etc/centos-release
# CentOS Linux release 8.1.1911 (Core)

Create a new non-root user account with sudo access and switch to it.

useradd -c "John Doe" johndoe && passwd johndoe
usermod -aG wheel johndoe
su - johndoe

NOTE: Replace johndoe with your username.

Set up the timezone.

timedatectl list-timezones
sudo timedatectl set-timezone 'Region/City'

Ensure that your system is up to date.

sudo yum update

Install the needed packages.

sudo yum install -y socat git

Disable SELinux and Firewall.

sudo setenforce 0 ; sudo systemctl stop firewalld ; sudo systemctl disable firewalld

Install PHP

Install PHP, as well as the necessary PHP extensions.

sudo yum install -y php php-cli php-fpm php-common php-mbstring php-curl php-mysqlnd php-json php-xml php-phar php-pdo php-gd

Check the version.

php -v
# PHP 7.2.11 (cli) (built: Oct 9 2018 15:09:36) ( NTS )

Check installed PHP extensions.

php -m

# mbstring
# curl
# gd
# PDO
# mysqli
# openssl
# . . .

Start and enable PHP-FPM.

sudo systemctl start php-fpm.service
sudo systemctl enable php-fpm.service

Install MariaDB

Install MariaDB.

sudo yum install -y mariadb-server

Check the version.

mysql --version
# mysql  Ver 15.1 Distrib 10.3.17-MariaDB, for Linux (x86_64) using readline 5.1

Start and enable MariaDB.

sudo systemctl start mariadb.service
sudo systemctl enable mariadb.service

Run the mysql_secure_installation script to improve the security of your MariaDB installation.

sudo mysql_secure_installation

Log into MariaDB as the root user.

sudo mysql -u root -p
# Enter password:

Create a new MariaDB database and user and remember the credentials.

CREATE DATABASE dbname;
GRANT ALL ON dbname.* TO 'username' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
exit;

Install Nginx

Install Nginx.

sudo yum install -y nginx

Check the version.

nginx -v
# nginx version: nginx/1.14.1

Start and enable Nginx.

sudo systemctl start nginx.service
sudo systemctl enable nginx.service

Configure Nginx for use with the X-Cart.

sudo vim /etc/nginx/conf.d/xcart.conf

And populate the file with the below config.

server {
  listen 80;
  listen [::]:80;
  root /var/www/xcart;
  index index.php index.html index.htm;
  server_name example.com;
  location @handler {
    index cart.php;
    rewrite ^/sitemap.xml(\?.+)?$ /cart.php?target=sitemap;
    rewrite ^/(.*)$ /cart.php?url=$1 last;
  }
  location / {
    try_files $uri $uri/ @handler;
  }
  location ~ \.php$ {
    try_files $uri @handler;
    fastcgi_split_path_info  ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
    fastcgi_index index.php;
    fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php-fpm/www.sock;
    include fastcgi_params;
    fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $fastcgi_path_info;
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
  }
}

Test the configuration.

sudo nginx -t

Reload Nginx.

sudo systemctl reload nginx.service

Install X-Cart

Navigate to the /var/www directory.

cd /var/www/

Download the most recent release of X-Cart to your local workstation from https://www.x-cart.com/download.html.

Upload the X-Cart package to your server using SFTP. See our SFTP instructions here. Place the file in your /var/www/ directory. In this example, the filename is x-cart-5.4.0.10-en.tgz, yours may be different.

Extract the X-Cart package.

sudo tar -xzpf x-cart-5.4.0.10-en.tgz
sudo rm x-cart-5.4.0.10-en.tgz

Change ownership of the /var/www/xcart directory to nginx.

sudo chown -R nginx:nginx /var/www/xcart

Run sudo vim /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf and set the user and group to nginx. Initially, they will be set to apache.

sudo vim /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf
# user = nginx
# group = nginx

Create /var/lib/php/session/ directory and change ownership to nginx.

sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/php/session && sudo chown -R nginx:nginx /var/lib/php/session

Restart the PHP-FPM service.

sudo systemctl restart php-fpm.service

Navigate to example.com/install.php in your web browser and follow the instructions to finish the installation.