Zen Cart is a popular open-source e-commerce platform that is used to build online stores. In this article, we will guide you through the process of installing Zen Cart on a fresh installation of Ubuntu 20.04.

Before we begin, make sure that you have a fresh installation of Ubuntu 20.04 and that LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) is installed on your system. You will also need to be logged in as a user with sudo privileges.

Download Zen Cart

The first step is to download the latest version of Zen Cart from the official website. To do this, run the following commands in the terminal:

wget <https://sourceforge.net/projects/zencart/files/latest/download> -O zencart.zip
unzip zencart.zip -d zencart

This will download the Zen Cart zip file and extract it to a new directory called "zencart".

Create a new MySQL database

Next, we need to create a new MySQL database for Zen Cart. To do this, log in to the MySQL shell using the following command:

mysql -u root -p

When prompted, enter the MySQL root password.

In the MySQL shell, run the following commands to create a new database called "zencart":

CREATE DATABASE zencart;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON zencart.* TO 'zencartuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;

Make sure to replace "zencartuser" and “password” with the actual username and password that you want to use for the Zen Cart database user.

Copy Zen Cart files to the web root directory

After creating the database, we need to copy the Zen Cart files to the web root directory. To do this, run the following commands in the terminal:

sudo cp -r zencart/ /var/www/html/zencart
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/zencart

This will copy the Zen Cart files to the web root directory and set the correct ownership permissions for the files.

Configure Apache

Next, we need to configure Apache to serve the Zen Cart website. To do this, create a new Apache virtual host file using the following command:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/zencart.conf

In the file, add the following configuration:

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName your-domain.com
  ServerAdmin admin@your-domain.com
  DocumentRoot /var/www/html/zencart

  <Directory /var/www/html/zencart>
    Options -Indexes +FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride All
    Require all granted
  </Directory>

  ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
  CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined

</VirtualHost>

Make sure to replace “your-domain.com” and "**admin@your-domain.com**" with the actual domain name and admin email