How to Install LiteCart on Ubuntu 16.04

In this tutorial we will teach you how to install LiteCart on Ubuntu 16.04. LiteCart is a free and open source e-commerce platform which was developed in PHP, jQuery, and HTML 5. Installing LiteCart on Ubuntu 16.04 is pretty simple and should take no more than 15 minutes.

Step 1: Logging in via SSH

To begin, login to your server with SSH as user root.

ssh root@IP_ADDRESS -p PORT_NUMBER

Change ‘IP_ADDRESS’ and ‘PORT_NUMBER’ to your actual server IP address and SSH port number.
After you have logged in, ensure that your Ubuntu 16.04 server is up-to-date by executing the commands below.

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

Step 2: Installing the Apache Web Server

In order to install the Apache web server, you need to execute the command below.

apt-get install apache2

Once the installation is done, you can enable the service to be started automatically once the system boots up, use the command below.

systemctl enable apache2

To check whether the Apache server is running or not, execute the command below.

systemctl status apache2

Step 3: Install the MySQL Database Server

In this step we will install the MySQL database server, in order to do this, execute the command below.

apt-get install mysql-server

Once the installation is done, you can start the database server and enable it to automatically start upon boot with the commands below.

systemctl start mysql
systemctl enable mysql

You can also use the ‘mysql_secure_installation’ script to improve the security of your MySQL database server.

mysql_secure_installation

Once you’ve answered every question, you may now go ahead and login to MySQL as root with your root password, by using the following command:

mysql -u root -p

To create a new database for the LiteCart installation, execute the commands below.

CREATE DATABASE litecart_db;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON litecart_db.* TO 'litecart_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'PASSWORD';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
exit;

Make sure to swap ‘PASSWORD’ with your own password of choice.

Step 5: Install LiteCart on Ubuntu 16.04

Since you have got your LAMP server ready, you may now begin installing LiteCart.

First of all, create a new folder for your LiteCart installation within the Apache document root directory on your server.

mkdir /var/www/html/litecart

Now, download the latest LiteCart version from the official site and put it within the newly created directory. Then you may extract the downloaded zip archive by running the following command.

unzip litecart-2.0.2.zip
Change the ownership of the LiteCart folder:
chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/litecart

Step 6: Setting up the Apache Virtual Host

If you would like to access your LiteCart installation with your own domain name, you must also create an Apache virtual host file.

nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/litecart.conf

Put the following content in this file.

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin [email protected]
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/litecart
ServerName yourdomain.com
ServerAlias www.yourdomain.com
<Directory /var/www/html/litecart>
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>
ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/litecart-error_log
CustomLog /var/log/apache2/litecart-access_log common
</VirtualHost>

Step 7: Enabling the Virtual Host File

You may enable the virtual host file using the command shown here.

ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/litecart.conf /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/litecart.conf

Step 8: Restarting Apache

To restart your Apache, use the following command.

systemctl restart apache2

Step 9: Completing the LiteCart Installation via Web Browser

This is all, you may now use your web browser of choice and point your browser to ‘http://yourdomain_or_ip_address.com‘, then follow the on-screen instructions to finish the LiteCart installation.