How to Install X-Cart 5 on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

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 Ubuntu version.

lsb_release -ds
# Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS

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

adduser johndoe --gecos "John Doe"
usermod -aG sudo johndoe
su - johndoe

NOTE: Replace johndoe with your username.

Set up the timezone.

sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

Ensure that your system is up to date.

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

Install the needed packages.

sudo apt install -y zip unzip curl wget git

Install PHP

Install PHP, as well as the necessary PHP extensions.

sudo apt install -y php7.2 php7.2-cli php7.2-fpm php7.2-common php7.2-mbstring php7.2-curl php7.2-mysql php7.2-json php7.2-xml php7.2-phar php7.2-pdo php7.2-gd

Check the version.

php -v
# PHP 7.2.24-0ubuntu0.18.04.3 (cli) (built: Feb 11 2020 15:55:52) ( NTS )

Check installed PHP extensions.

php -m

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

Install MySQL

Install MySQL.

sudo apt install -y mysql-server

Check the version.

mysql --version
# mysql  Ver 14.14 Distrib 5.7.29, for Linux (x86_64) using  EditLine wrapper

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

sudo mysql_secure_installation

Log into MySQL as the root user.

sudo mysql -u root -p
# Enter password:

Create a new MySQL 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 apt install -y nginx

Check the version.

sudo nginx -v
# nginx version: nginx/1.14.0 (Ubuntu)

Configure Nginx for use with the X-Cart.

sudo vim /etc/nginx/sites-available/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/php7.2-fpm.sock;
    include fastcgi_params;
    fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $fastcgi_path_info;
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
  }
}

Activate the new xcart.conf configuration by linking the file to the sites-enabled directory.

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/xcart.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled

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 www-data.

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

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