Practical Web Tips

Recently I came across the open source Ecommerce package OSCommerce and decided I wanted to play around with it to see what features it offers and how easy it was to administer. The first problem I ran into though was the instructions they provided for installing it locally were pretty limited. I saw that some others were having the same frustrations in some forums. So after a bit of messing around I figured it out and here are the instructions for those having similar problems.

These instructions are for windows users.

1. Download xampp if you do not already have it from apachefriends.org but I recommend installing the older version of 1.8.6 where you can find by googling xampp 1.8.6 because as I have found the 1.6.8 version of xampp is the easiest to install and work with.

2. Go to OSCommerce and download the files.

3. Unzip the files

4. Go to and open your xampp folder in the directory you installed it in. Locate the folder called htdocs and open it

5. Place your OScommerce folder in the htdocs folder

6. Next open your OScommerce folder

7. Copy the folder named "catalog" and paste it back into the htdocs folder

8. If it is not running already start xampp and make sure that the apache and mysql services are running. (if you dont know how to start xampp, then click on the desktop shortcut it made when it installed or select it from your list of programs. Once the control panel appears click start on the apache and mysql services and make sure both say "running" before proceeding.

9. Type in "localhost/phpmyadmin" into your browser address bar

10. Create a table and name it whatever you like (I used catalog to make it easy)

11. Now type in "localhost/"yourdatabasename"

12. Thats it! Now follow the onscreen instructions for completing your installation