How to install CubeCart as your online store
If you are a small business selling products to consumers, you better have an e-commerce site and business. But where to start? You can choose a solution like Shopify or BigCommerce and risk spending top dollar. You can also go the open source route and use a product like CubeCart.
With CubeCart, you can develop and maintain a complete e-commerce platform and install it on your company’s server or use a web solution like Hostinger. I did this recently when I wanted to create an online store.
What is CubeCart?
CubeCart is a popular open source e-commerce shopping cart solution that enables businesses of all sizes to develop and manage their online commerce platforms. The British company offers a comprehensive suite of online store management tools, including product and order management, customer account features and reporting capabilities. All versions of CubeCart are free and do not require license keys.
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The main advantage of CubeCart is its ability to adapt to specific business needs. The Smarty engine, combined with user-friendly templates, allows users to easily design and modify the look and feel of their online store. The platform features a responsive design that ensures both form and functionality across all devices, including desktops, smartphones and tablets.
CubeCart allows users to easily organize their inventory, manage products by category, and upload detailed product information and digital download content. The platform’s central order management interface simplifies order processing, viewing order history, and managing customer information.
The platform enables global e-commerce as it supports multi-currency and multi-language features. It also supports secure transactions through various payment gateways, SSL encryption, and payment transaction log capabilities.
The platform provides enhanced online visibility through SEO optimization, which produces search engine friendly URLs as well as manual metadata controls. CubeCart Marketplace provides users with numerous plugins and integrations that help extend the functionality of the platform through shipping methods, social plugins, abandoned cart recovery, and marketing tools.
The system’s intuitive administration interface makes managing an online store easy for both beginners and experts. The platform has an analytics dashboard that tracks sales performance and customer activity. You can run CubeCart as a self-hosted system or choose official optimized hosting solutions.
What is Hostinger?
Hostinger offers great benefits tailored to small businesses, making it a popular choice for establishing an online presence. One of the most important advantages is its affordable price. Hostinger offers competitively priced plans with essential features like a free domain name, SSL certificates, and business email accounts. This combination can significantly reduce initial setup costs, making it an ideal option for budget-conscious entrepreneurs looking to launch their website without breaking the bank.
In addition to profitability, Hostinger prioritizes performance. With features like LiteSpeed web servers and SSD storage, users benefit from fast load times, crucial for user experience and search engine optimization. A website that loads quickly is more likely to retain visitors, improve engagement, and improve search engine rankings. This focus on performance ensures that small businesses can create a seamless online experience for their customers, which can be a deciding factor in today’s competitive digital landscape.
Hostinger also makes building and managing websites accessible, even to those with limited technical expertise. Their user-friendly hPanel control panel and intuitive drag-and-drop website builder allow anyone to create a professional-looking website without extensive coding knowledge. This ease of use allows small business owners to focus on their core operations rather than getting bogged down in technical details, allowing them to bring their visions to life quickly and efficiently.
Customer support is another essential aspect that Hostinger excels at. With reliable 24/7 customer support via live chat, small business owners can quickly resolve technical issues or questions, ensuring minimal downtime. This level of support is crucial for businesses that rely on their online presence to attract and retain customers, as delays can lead to lost sales and a damaged reputation.
Security is a top priority for Hostinger. The platform includes robust security measures such as daily backups, malware scanners, and DDoS protection to protect valuable business data and customer information. By prioritizing security, Hostinger helps small business owners have peace of mind, knowing that their websites and customer data are well protected from potential threats.
Finally, one of the most notable features of Hostinger is its scalability. As small businesses grow, so do their online needs. Hostinger provides the flexibility to easily upgrade hosting plans as traffic and demand for resources increase. This scalability ensures that businesses do not have to worry about outgrowing their hosting solutions, allowing them to confidently focus on growth and expansion.
Install CubeCart on Hostinger
You can install CubeCart manually on a corporate server or use an automatic installation tool if you are a Hostinger customer.
To start using the automatic installer:
- Log in to your Hostinger Account on the official Hostinger website.
- In the left menu, click Websites.
- Next to your account name, click Dashboard.
- In the left menu, go to Websites again and select Auto installer.
- In the “Other” section, click Select.
- From the drop-down menu, choose CubeCart.
- Click Select.
- A pop-up window will appear to configure your CubeCart facility. To separate it from your main site, it is recommended to install CubeCart in a subdirectory of your website (for example, “yourdomain.com/store”).
During these next steps, you must assign a Website title, admin email address, admin usernameAnd Administrator password at the top of the pop-up window.
Then click AdvanceSO:
In the Enter subdirectory box, type the name you want for your subdirectory (for example, `ls`, `store`, `cubecart`).
Make sure “Create a new database” is selected, then assign a strong password for this new database.
Final steps
It’s time to configure CubeCart using the new site’s admin control panel. This page is difficult to find because of the way it is set up. Many installations include an “admin.php” file for this, but not CubeCart. For security reasons, the name of this file is changed to something like “admin_xkdlsdf.php”. This is where you will find the control panel.
You can go to the FTP section of Hostinger to find the example name of this file.
In my example, I installed CubeCart as a subdirectory of my website called “store”. Therefore, the control panel is located at http://mywebsitename.com/store/admin.xkdlsdf.php.
You can log in from this page using the credentials you created above. On the next page, you can configure CubeCart as you wish.
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