AbanteCart is a powerful open source eCommerce Platform, usually known as shopping cart software. Using AbanteCart we can create our own online store to sell anything with possibility to grow and expand as business require.
Some notable features of AbanteCart:
- 100% Mobile support
- SEO Friendly eCommerce
- No licensing cost
- Easy to learn and simple to use
- Equipped with enterprise grade features out of the box
- Using innovative technology like HTML5, bootstrap, JQuery and much more.
- Build using PHP that also used by many CMS and open source software
- Easily enable API to allow third party integration.
- Fast and secure, implemented with industry best practice and PCI compliance.
We can even extend this capabilities using extension. You can learn more about AbanteCart features from feature page.
Objective
In this tutorial we’ll learn how-to install AbanteCart on Ubuntu 14.04. We will also install and configure its prerequisites
Prerequisites
We will install AbanteCart in fresh installation of Ubuntu Server 14.04. We also need these application to be able to run AbanteCart:
- Apache 2
- MySQL 5
- PHP > 5.3.1
- AbanteCart also require the following php libraries
- php5-gd
- php5-curl
- php5-mcrypt
Update Base System
Before we install AbanteCart, let’s update the system to the latest update.
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get -y upgrade
Install Apache 2
After applying latest update to our base system, Lets’s start installing Apache 2 and required libraries.
$ sudo apt-get -y install apache2 apache2-bin apache2-data apache2-mpm-prefork libaio1 libapache2-mod-php5 libapr1 libaprutil1 libdbd-mysql-perl libdbi-perl libhtml-template-perl libmysqlclient18 libterm-readkey-perl libwrap0 ssl-cert tcpd
We can check Apache 2 service status using the command below:
sudo service apache2 status
* apache2 is running
We can also check on which post Apache is listening on using command below.
sudo netstat -naptu | grep apache
tcp6 0 0 :::80 :::* LISTEN 14873/apache2
Install MySQL 5.6
We will install and use MySQL 5.6 as the database for AbanteCart.
We will use MySQL Server 5.6 since MySQL 5.6 is the most up to date version of MySQL shipped with Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr.
$ sudo apt-get -y install mysql-server-5.6
We need to setup MySQL root password. Please input password for MySQL root user.
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Verify root password.
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Securing MySQL Installation.
We will secure MySQL installation by running mysql_secure_installation.
Enter root password that we set on installation
$ mysql_secure_installation
NOTE: RUNNING ALL PARTS OF THIS SCRIPT IS RECOMMENDED FOR ALL MySQL
SERVERS IN PRODUCTION USE! PLEASE READ EACH STEP CAREFULLY!
In order to log into MySQL to secure it, we'll need the current
password for the root user. If you've just installed MySQL, and
you haven't set the root password yet, the password will be blank,
so you should just press enter here.
Enter current password for root (enter for none):
OK, successfully used password, moving on...
Since we already have root password set, answer this part with n
Setting the root password ensures that nobody can log into the MySQL
root user without the proper authorisation.
You already have a root password set, so you can safely answer 'n'.
Change the root password? [Y/n] n
... skipping.
Remove anonymous user to improve security. This will make sure people or application have correct username and password to login to MySQL. Answer with Y
By default, a MySQL installation has an anonymous user, allowing anyone
to log into MySQL without having to have a user account created for
them. This is intended only for testing, and to make the installation
go a bit smoother. You should remove them before moving into a
production environment.
Remove anonymous users? [Y/n] Y
... Success!
We also want remove root login from remote machine. Answer with Y.
Normally, root should only be allowed to connect from 'localhost'. This
ensures that someone cannot guess at the root password from the network.
Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n] Y
... Success!
Previously the test database created automatically by MySQL installation, but MySQL 5.6 does not create test database. We can still choose Y, it will throw an error but that’s fine.
By default, MySQL comes with a database named 'test' that anyone can
access. This is also intended only for testing, and should be removed
before moving into a production environment.
Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n] Y
- Dropping test database...
ERROR 1008 (HY000) at line 1: Can't drop database 'test'; database doesn't exist
... Failed! Not critical, keep moving...
- Removing privileges on test database...
... Success!
The last step is to reload MySQL privilege table.
Reloading the privilege tables will ensure that all changes made so far
will take effect immediately.
Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n] Y
... Success!
All done! If you've completed all of the above steps, your MySQL
installation should now be secure.
Thanks for using MySQL!
Cleaning up...
Create a Database for Abantecart
Now we have a secure MySQL installation, time to create database and user for abantecart itself.
Login to MySQL using the root credentials.
$ mysql -u root -p
Enter password:
Welcome to the MySQL monitor. Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 58
Server version: 5.6.30-0ubuntu0.14.04.1 (Ubuntu)
Copyright (c) 2000, 2016, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its
affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective
owners.
Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.
mysql>
Create a new database named abantecart using command below:
mysql> CREATE DATABASE abantecart;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)
Create a User for Abantecart
Database for abantecart is ready, let’s create username and password and grant privileges to abantecart database.
Don’t forget to change the password abantecart123secret below with better password.
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON `abantecart`.* TO 'abantecart'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'abantecart123secret';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
We need to run FLUSH PRIVILEGES command so that the privileges table will be reloaded by MySQL and we can use new credential.
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
Exit from MySQL console by typing \q.
mysql> \q
Install PHP 5
The Last component that we have to install before we can install Abantecart is PHP 5. We will install PHP 5 and several common PHP libraries.
$ sudo apt-get -y install php5-cli php5-common php5-json php5-mysql php5-readline
Install additional PHP libraries:
$ sudo apt-get -y install php5-gd php5-mcrypt php5-curl
We will disable php5 opcache module and enable mcrypt module. This is required by AbanteCart.
$ sudo php5dismod opcache
$ sudo php5enmod mcrypt
Restart Apache 2 process so the changes will be applied.
$ sudo service apache2 restart
Install Abantecart
All prerequisites are now installed, so we’re ready to install Abantecart. The latest stable version of abantecart is available AbanteCart download page.
At the time of this writing, the latest stable version is version 1.2.9, let’s download Abantecart compressed file using wget.
$ wget -c https://github.com/abantecart/abantecart-src/archive/master.zip -O abantecart.zip
Extract the downloaded file using unzip. If your system don’t have unzip yet, you can install unzip using command below:
$ sudo apt-get -y install unzip
Extract abantecart using unzip.
$ unzip abantecart.zip
Go to extracted directory and rename public_html directory to abantecart.
$ cd abantecart-src-master/
$ mv public_html abantecart
Move abantecart folder to the Apache directory.
$ sudo mv abantecart /var/www
Change ownership of abantecart directory to www-data user and group.
$ sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/abantecart
The Abantecart files are now ready, so let’s create Apache Virtual Host configuration to serve Abantecart.
Configure Apache Virtual Host for http Only
Create new apache configuration file on /etc/apache2/sites-available/abantecart.conf with contents below.
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName abantecart.exampleserver.xyz
DocumentRoot /var/www/abantecart
<Directory /var/www/abantecart>
Options -Indexes +FollowSymLinks +MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/abantecart.exampleserver.xyz-error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/abantecart.exampleserver.xyz-access.log combined
</VirtualHost>
Don’t forget to change abantecart.exampleserver.xyz above with the domain name that you use for your abantecart installation.
Enable the site using a2ensite command.
$ sudo a2ensite abantecart
Reload apache2 process so it read the new virtualhost configuration:
$ sudo service apache2 reload
AbanteCart Setup Wizard
Now point your browser to AbanteCart site address. We will be redirected to the AbanteCart Setup Wizard.
The first step is the license agreement. You can read the license then check the I agree to the license checkbox on the bottom, then click continue.
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After accepting the license we will go to compatibility validation page. We should already pass all the requirements by now. Click Continue
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In this step we will configure database, admin section unique key and admin credential.
Choose MySQLi for database driver, input username, password and also the database name that we created for AbanteCart.
The Admin section is a unique key that will be used as location of admin panel. We can add any alphanumeric value on for this.
The last one is admin credentials. You can choose any username for admin (doesn’t have to be admin), input and confirm password and also admin email.
The last configuration on this page is the option to load demo data into our installation. In this tutorial I’ll load the demo data, you can uncheck the Load Demo data if you want a clean start. Click Continue.
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Installation is finished. From here we can go to our online shop or go to Control Panel.
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If we choose going to our online shop now we will get AbanteCart that already loaded with demo data
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If we choose to go to the admin panel we will be greeted with login page. We can login using credentials that we created on installation wizard.
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After logging in for the first time there will be Quick Start Wizard. On the first page we can define site name, title and meta for our site.
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On the second page we can set Google Analytics account number and multiple settings related to stock.
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In the next page we can define tax related settings for our shop
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The next step we can upload a new logo and new icon for our shop and also define image thumbnail height and width.
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In this part we can define the SMTP server. We can use SMTP on the same server, on different server or even using third party email service.
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This is the last step where we can go to various additional configurations.
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Setup finished. Now we can see the whole Admin panel
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AbanteCart Post Setup
After running the setup and quick start wizard we need to do two additional things, remove the installation directory and enable pretty links.
Remove Installation Directory
As AbanteCart already warn us on the last step of setup wizard we need to remove install directory to secure our setup.
$ sudo rm -rf /var/www/abantecart/install
Enable Pretty Links
Login to Admin section of our AbanteCart installation. Go to System -> Settings -> Systems.
Turn on On SEO URL’s
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Now rename the default .htaccess.txt to .htaccess.
$ cd /var/www/abantecart
$ sudo mv .htaccess.txt .htaccess
Now your e-store have pretty links.
Configure https Only Site for Abantecart
A secure connection is now a requirement for web applications. The last step that we will do in this tutorial is changing the connection to only use https. We assume that you already have SSL certificate and private key.
Let’s create new apache virtual host configuration on /etc/apache2/sites-available/abantecart-ssl.conf with contents below.
Don’t forget to change:
ServerNameSSLCertificateFileSSLCertificateChainFileSSLCertificateKeyFile
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName abantecart.exampleserver.xyz
Redirect permanent / https://abantecart.exampleserver.xyz/
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost *:443>
ServerName abantecart.exampleserver.xyz
DocumentRoot /var/www/abantecart
<Directory /var/www/abantecart>
Options -Indexes +FollowSymLinks +MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/abantecart.exampleserver.xyz-error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/abantecart.exampleserver.xyz-access.log combined
SSLEngine on
SSLCertificateFile /etc/apache2/ssl/abantecart.exampleserver.xyz.crt
SSLCertificateChainFile /etc/apache2/ssl/abantecart.exampleserver.xyz.crt
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/apache2/ssl/abantecart.exampleserver.xyz.key
# Uncomment the following directive when using client certificate authentication
#SSLCACertificateFile /path/to/ca_certs_for_client_authentication
# HSTS (mod_headers is required) (15768000 seconds = 6 months)
Header always set Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=15768000"
</VirtualHost>
# intermediate configuration, tweak to your needs
SSLProtocol all -SSLv2 -SSLv3
SSLCipherSuite ECDHE-ECDSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA:DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:ECDHE-ECDSA-DES-CBC3-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA:EDH-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA:AES128-GCM-SHA256:AES256-GCM-SHA384:AES128-SHA256:AES256-SHA256:AES128-SHA:AES256-SHA:DES-CBC3-SHA:!DSS
SSLHonorCipherOrder on
We will also disable abantecart http only virtual host and enable the new virtual host config.
$ sudo a2dissite abantecart
$ sudo a2ensite abantecart-ssl
The new virtual host configuration need Apache mod_ssl and mod_headers modules. We need to enable those modules.
$ sudo a2enmod ssl
$ sudo a2enmod headers
Now, restart Apache 2 service so it will reload its configuration. We need to restart instead of reload since we enabled a new module.
$ sudo service apache2 restart
Summary
In this tutorial we learned how to install Abantecart on Ubuntu 14.04.
We installed all the prerequisites, created a user and database on MySQL for AbanteCart and also configured Apache 2 virtual hosts to be able to serve Abantecart.
We also configured https settings for Abantecart so we run AbanteCart securely, this increases people’s confidence in performing a transaction on our e-store.
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