How to deploy Opencart application on Hostgator or any Hosting site

Opencart hosting on shared hosting/ Hostgator

Opencart is a PHP open source e-Commerce solution.

Building an eCommerce application using Opencart is easy but hosting an Opencart application on any shared hosting site such as hostgator requires some little modification to your config files.

On your localhost, you would have PHPMyAdmin and PHP configured on your system. You can easily build application and run it on the browser easily.

In case of hosting it on shared hosting you can't just upload your application files to the public_html directory of shared hosting. It requires to configure Opencart config file for database and directories setting.

I will provide you awesome trick to upload and run Opencart application without much settings and configuration. I have tried it and well tested. Just follow these below steps:

Step 1: Copy your Opencart application to any other directory (Lets say /home/opencart-demo). (Just for your backup because we are going to change some config files).

Step 2: Empty the opencart-demo/config.php file and in opencart-demo/admin/config.php.

Step 3: Copy the install folder from the Opencart installation package to opencart-demo/ (If you have deleted it just download the new one but same version).

Step 4: Export your database (in .sql format) and place the database file to install directory (opencart-demo/install).

Step 5: Delete existing opencart.sql and rename the exported sql file to opencart.sql.

Step 6: Now create empty database in the cPanel on your hosting site.

Step 7: Upload your application to public_html directory of your hosting through FTP.

Step 8: Now goto the browser and type domain (for example: www.opencart-demo/install) it will install your application with updated database and code. Just follow the instructions as you would have done with local installation.