This article describes steps one can take to install and use LiteCart on Ubuntu Linux with Nginx support.
LiteCart is an eCommerce platform build with PHP, jQuery and HTML 5. It’s lightweight and fast, clean and simple, easy to install and use and supports jQuery and the latest HTML 5.
When deciding on how to run an online store to sell your products, two things you may want to make sure you’re doing.
First, find a great eCommerce platform and ensure all the pages are HTTPS compliant with SSL/TLS certificates installed correctly.
How to install LiteCart on Ubuntu Linux with Nginx support
As described above, LiteCart is an eCommerce platform build with PHP, jQuery and HTML 5. It’s lightweight and fast, clean and simple, easy to install and use and supports jQuery and the latest HTML 5.
Below is how to install it on Ubuntu Linux with Nginx support.
Install Nginx
LiteCart works with a website. Nginx HTTP Server represents the E in the LEMP stack. It’s the second most popular web server in use. So, install it, since LiteCart needs it.
To install Nginx HTTP on Ubuntu server, run the commands below.
sudo apt update sudo apt install nginx
After installing Nginx, the commands below can be used to stop, start and enable Nginx service to always start up with the server boots.
sudo systemctl stop nginx.service sudo systemctl start nginx.service sudo systemctl enable nginx.service
To test Nginx setup, open your browser and browse to the server hostname or IP address and you should see Nginx default test page as shown below. When you see that, then Nginx is working as expected.
Install MariaDB
MariaDB database server is a great place to start when looking at open-source database servers to use with LiteCart.
To install MariaDB run the commands below.
sudo apt-get install mariadb-server mariadb-client
After installing MariaDB, the commands below can be used to stop, start and enable MariaDB service to always start up when the server boots.
Run these on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
sudo systemctl stop mysql.service sudo systemctl start mysql.service sudo systemctl enable mysql.service
Run these on Ubuntu 17.10 and 18.04 LTS
sudo systemctl stop mariadb.service sudo systemctl start mariadb.service sudo systemctl enable mariadb.service
After that, run the commands below to secure MariaDB server by creating a root password and disallowing remote root access.
sudo mysql_secure_installation
When prompted, answer the questions below by following the guide.
- Enter current password for root (enter for none): Just press the Enter
- Set root password? [Y/n]: Y
- New password: Enter password
- Re-enter new password: Repeat password
- Remove anonymous users? [Y/n]: Y
- Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n]: Y
- Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n]: Y
- Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n]: Y
To test if MariaDB is installed, type the commands below to logon to MariaDB server
sudo mysql -u root -p
Then type the password you created above to sign on. if successful, you should see MariaDB welcome message
Install PHP 7.2-FPM and Related Modules
PHP 7.2 isn’t available on Ubuntu default repositories. In order to install it, you will have to get it from third-party repositories.
Run the commands below to add the below third party repository to upgrade to PHP 7.2
sudo apt-get install software-properties-common sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
Then update and upgrade to PHP 7.2-FPM
sudo apt update
Next, run the commands below to install PHP 7.2-FPM and related modules.
sudo apt install php7.2-fpm php7.2-common php7.2-mbstring php7.2-xmlrpc php7.2-soap php7.2-gd php7.2-xml php7.2-intl php7.2-mysql php7.2-cli php7.2-zip php7.2-curl
After installing PHP 7.2-FPM, run the commands below to open PHP default config file for Nginx.
sudo nano /etc/php/7.2/fpm/php.ini
Then make the changes on the following lines below in the file and save. The value below are great settings to apply in your environments.
file_uploads = On allow_url_fopen = On memory_limit = 256M upload_max_filesize = 100M cgi.fix_pathinfo = 0 max_execution_time = 360 date.timezone = America/Chicago
After making the change above, save the file and close out.
After installing PHP and related modules, all you have to do is restart Nginxto reload PHP configurations.
To restart Nginx, run the commands below
sudo systemctl restart nginx.service
Create LiteCart Database
Now that you’ve installed all the packages that are required for LiteCart to function, continue below to start configuring the servers.
First run the commands below to create a blank LiteCart database.
To logon to MariaDB database server, run the commands below.
sudo mysql -u root -p
Then create a database called litecart
CREATE DATABASE litecart;
Create a database user called litecartuser with new password
CREATE USER 'litecartuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'new_password_here';
Then grant the user full access to the database.
GRANT ALL ON litecart.* TO 'litecartuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'user_password_here' WITH GRANT OPTION;
Finally, save your changes and exit.
FLUSH PRIVILEGES; EXIT;
Download LiteCart Latest Release
Next, visit LiteCart site and download the latest package, or run the commands below to download and extract LiteCart content.
After downloading, run the commands below to extract the downloaded file and move it into a new LiteCart root directory.
cd /tmp && wget -c " -O litecart-2.1.1.zip sudo apt-get install unzip sudo mkdir /var/www/html/litecart sudo unzip litecart-2.1.1.zip -d /var/www/html/litecart
Then run the commands below to set the correct permissions for LiteCart to function properly.
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/litecart/ sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/litecart/
Configure Nginx LiteCart Site
Finally, configure Nginx server block file for LiteCart. This file will control how users’ access LiteCart content. Run the commands below to create a new configuration file called litecart
sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/litecart
Then copy and paste the content below into the file and save it. Replace the highlighted line with your own domain name and directory root location.
server {
listen 80;
listen [::]:80;
root /var/www/html/litecart;
index index.php index.html index.htm;
server_name example.com www.example.com;
client_max_body_size 100M;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php$is_args$args;
}
location ~ \.php$ {
include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.2-fpm.sock;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
include fastcgi_params;
}
}
Save the file and exit.
After configuring the VirtualHost above, enable it by running the commands below
Enable the LiteCart Site and Rewrite Module
After configuring the VirtualHost above, enable it by running the commands below, then restart Nginx server.
sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/litecart /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
Install Let’s Encrypt Client
To get Let’s Encrypt free SSL/TLS certificates on your Ubuntu machine, you should first install its client. The client helps automate the process for you. To install it, run the commands below.
sudo apt-get install python-certbot-nginx
If python-certbot-nginx isn’t already installed, you may have to add its PPA repository and install the package.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:certbot/certbot sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install python-certbot-nginx
Obtaining your free SSL/TLS Certificates
After installing Let’s Encrypt Certbot client module for Nginx, run the commands below to obtain your free Let’s Encrypt SSL/TLS certificate the domain specified. make sure to replace example.com with your own domain.
sudo certbot --nginx -m [email protected] -d example.com -d www.example.com
After running the above commands, you should get prompted to accept the licensing terms. If everything is checked, the client should automatically install the free SSL/TLS certificate and configure the Nginx site to use the certs.
Please read the Terms of Service at
You must
agree in order to register with the ACME server at
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(A)gree/(C)ancel: A
Choose Yes ( Y ) to share your email address
Would you be willing to share your email address with the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, a founding partner of the Let's Encrypt project and the non-profit
organization that develops Certbot? We'd like to send you email about EFF and
our work to encrypt the web, protect its users and defend digital rights.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Y)es/(N)o: Y
This is how easy is it to obtain your free SSL/TLS certificate for your Nginx powered website.
Please choose whether or not to redirect HTTP traffic to HTTPS, removing HTTP access. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1: No redirect - Make no further changes to the webserver configuration. 2: Redirect - Make all requests redirect to secure HTTPS access. Choose this for new sites, or if you're confident your site works on HTTPS. You can undo this change by editing your web server's configuration. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Select the appropriate number [1-2] then [enter] (press 'c' to cancel): 2
Pick option 2 to redirect all traffic over HTTPS. This is important!
After that, the SSL client should install the cert and configure your website to redirect all traffic over HTTPS.
Congratulations! You have successfully enabled and You should test your configuration at: https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=example.com https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=www.example.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- IMPORTANT NOTES: - Congratulations! Your certificate and chain have been saved at: /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/fullchain.pem Your key file has been saved at: /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/privkey.pem Your cert will expire on 2018-02-24. To obtain a new or tweaked version of this certificate in the future, simply run certbot again with the "certonly" option. To non-interactively renew *all* of your certificates, run "certbot renew" - If you like Certbot, please consider supporting our work by: Donating to ISRG / Let's Encrypt: Donating to EFF:
The highlighted code block should be added to your Nginx LiteCart configuration file automatically by Let’s Encrypt certbot. Your LiteCart site is ready to be used over HTTPS.
server {
listen 80;
listen [::]:80;
root /var/www/html/litecart;
index index.php index.html index.htm;
server_name example.com www.example.com;
client_max_body_size 100M;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php$is_args$args;
}
location ~ \.php$ {
include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.2-fpm.sock;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
include fastcgi_params;
}
listen 443 ssl; # managed by Certbot
ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/fullchain.pem; # managed by Certbot
ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/privkey.pem; # managed by Certbot
include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-nginx.conf; # managed by Certbot
ssl_dhparam /etc/letsencrypt/ssl-dhparams.pem; # managed by Certbot
if ($scheme != "https") {
return 301
} # managed by Certbot
# Redirect non-https traffic to https
# if ($scheme != "https") {
# return 301
# } # managed by Certbot
}
You’ll have to manually renew the certificates. You’ll get email reminder to reset when the certificates are about to expire. To test the renewal process run the commands below.
sudo certbot renew --dry-run
To setup a process to automatically renew the certificates, add a cron job to execute the renewal process.
sudo crontab -e
Then add the line below and save.
0 1 * * * /usr/bin/certbot renew & > /dev/null
The cron job will attempt to renew 30 days before expiring
After that, open your browser and browse to your domain name to launch LiteCart configuration wizard.
You should see LiteCart setup wizard to complete. Please follow the wizard carefully.
Type the database connection info and the store admin account. then click Install Now
Congratulations! You’ve successfully installed LiteCart with Let’s Encrypt free SSL certificates.
After installing, run the commands below to delete the installer folder.
sudo rm -rf /var/www/html/litecart/install
To logon to LiteCart backend portal as admin, go to the URL below
Enjoy!
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