ShopSite 6.3 Installation Instructions
To install ShopSite on your Linux/Unix server, all you need is your favorite Web browser and FTP or telnet access to your server.
If you are upgrading from a previous version of ShopSite, please use the upgrading instructions.
Table of Contents
- I. Pre-Installation Requirements
- II. Planning ShopSite Directories
- III. Run the Install Program
- IV. Configure the Web Server
- V. Build Your Store!
- VI. Troubleshooting
- VII. Installing on a Virtual Server
Before installing ShopSite, your server must meet the following requirements:
- Your server must have the minimum hardware and software requirements.
- Your Web server software must be working correctly, including user authentication. If your Web server is not working, you cannot install ShopSite. If you do not have a Web server, a good one is Apache. It is free. ShopSite works with all NCSA-compatible Web servers such as Netscape and Microsoft's IIS.
If applicable, read the special instructions for Cobat Raq or Plesk PSA.
The ShopSite install program will prompt you for the paths and URLs of five directories:
- Executable files are put in two separate directories, a "ShopSite Directory" and a "Shopping Cart Directory". These directories need to be aliased in your server and accessible through URLs.
® Put these directories in or under your server's cgi-bin directory. As a security measure, you should configure your server to only serve CGI programs from the cgi-bin directories, not text files or HTML files.
- Your store also needs an "HTML Output" directory to store its HTML files, which are the generated pages for the store. The storefront URL must be aliased to the store's HTML Output directory.
® Put the HTML Output Directory wherever your existing HTML goes.
Note that the images for each store are kept in a media subdirectory of the store's HTML Output Directory, and you may want to configure FTP access to the media directory.
- Graphics used by all ShopSite stores are stored in a separate directory that must be accessible by the Web server. The recommended directory is shopsite-images under your Web server's document root.
- Your store needs a "Data" directory to hold its databases of products and pages.
® Set the permissions on the "Data" directory so that your Web server can access it, but make sure that it cannot be accessed from a browser. In other words, do not put the "Data" directory under the Web server's document root directory.
Plan the directory locations before starting the installation. An example directory structure might look like this:
Once you have downloaded the compressed installation program, you can easily install ShopSite using just your browser.
- Use an FTP client to connect to support.shopsite.com.
- Log in, using the username and password that were given to you for downloading the ShopSite software.
- Navigate to the directory for your server platform.
- Use a binary-mode transfer to download the zip file for your ShopSite version and platform. Put the file in a directory on your server where you keep compressed (zipped) program installation files.
from which you will run the install.
- If there is a patch directory in the operating system directory, cd to it. Download all of its contents to the same location as the installation file. If there are patches, you will install them after completing the regular installation.
- Unzip the install file into a directory where the webserver user has execute and write permission, such as somewhere under the cgi-bin directory.
- Be sure that you have a store.auth file for the store -- it is the "ignition key" for your store and you cannot install without it. The salesperson or hosting service should provide the file. Copy the store.auth into the directory containing the unzipped install files.
- Set permissions on the files and the directory and in your Web server so that you can execute the wwwinstall.cgi and info.cgi programs from your Web browser.
- Point your browser to the wwwinstall.cgi file in the installation directory.
- On the first screen, click Create a new ShopSite installation.
- On the next screen, enter values in the various fields and click OK. You must fill in all of the fields or the installation program will not work.
- The installation program begins installing ShopSite and shows you the results of the install. If there were any errors, change the appropriate fields and click the OK button again.
- If you downloaded any patch files, install them now.
- Patches are usually a newer version of a cgi file that was originally installed as part of ShopSite, so each patch file will have the same name as an existing file on your server. Locate the existing file in the ShopSite directories and make a copy of it or back it up to some other location.
- Copy the patch file over the existing file.
- Repeat the last two steps for each patch file that you downloaded.
Configure the Web server to recognize the new directories:
- Alias the ShopSite URL to point to the "ShopSite Directory".
- Alias the Shopping Cart URL to point to the "Shopping Cart Directory".
ShopSite requires Apache-style passwords, using .htaccess files. If you are using a Netscape server, you can configure it to use .htaccess files by following the instructions at the Netscape site.
Once you've installed the software, the merchant can build the store! Tell the merchant to point his or her browser to start.cgi in the directory where you installed the CGIs. After the merchant enters the username and password, the ShopSite Store Setup Wizard will guide him or her through the process of building a store.
Merchants can click the "?" in the upper right-hand corner of any screen to get help on that screen, and to access the searchable ShopSite help system and knowledgebase.
If your installation did not work, pay attention to the error messages you receive; they should point you in the right direction. If that fails, try checking the following:
- Are file permissions set correctly for all the directories that you specified? Not having file permissions and ownership set correctly is the number one installation problem that users run into. Specifically, the UNIX user account under which CGIs are executed needs to be able to write in those CGI directories.
- Is your Web server configured correctly?
- Did you enter the same store ID and URL that you told the salesperson when the store.auth file was originally created? If you've changed your mind, you'll need a new store.auth file.
- Was the store.auth file in the same directory as the installation program? If so, it should have created a new file called yourstoreid.auth in your store's data directory.
If you still can't solve the problem, visit the Help with ShopSite page and search our online resources.
On most virtual servers, the directory paths that you can see from a telnet session are not the same as when viewed from a Web browser. Keep this in mind when specifying the paths used by the browser-based install program.
- Ensure there is a tmp directory at the virtual root, or tar will produce errors.
- Make sure that the Web Server has access to the tar executable.
Iserver (Verio) Install Issues
