Introduction

Interspire Shopping Cart is a simple to install series of PHP scripts and HTML files. This guide will explain how to install the product from your web browser. Before continuing, please make sure your web server meets the minimum requirements listed here.

Uploading Files to Your Web Server

Start by downloading the product's zip file from the Interspire client area and unzipping it to your local computer. Next, upload the files to your web site using an FTP program such as FileZilla or CuteFTP (on Windows) or Transmit or Cyberduck (on a Mac). If you are on a Mac, make sure that you set your FTP program to show hidden files so that you can upload the .htaccess file. On Transmit this is under View->Show Invisible Files.

Running the Installation Wizard

In your web browser, go to the site and directory where you have uploaded the files to (such as http://www.example.com/store) and the installation wizard will start. If you see an error message about the PHP version not meeting the minimum requirements, contact your web host for details on how to switch your account to use PHP5. This varies between hosts but is usually just a setting in your web host's control panel or by adding a line to your .htaccess file.

Another error you might get at the start of the installation wizard is if one of the required PHP extensions is not installed. The PHP extensions required at the time of writing this guide are:
  • MySQL
  • GD
  • SimpleXML
Depending on the specific Interspire Shopping Cart features you use there may be additional requirements but these are the minimum requirements to complete the installation process.

The final error you may get at the start of the installation process is file permissions. In your FTP program you may have to change the permissions of the remote files to allow certain folders and files to be writable by Interspire shopping cart.

For security reasons we recommend that you first try an install of shopping cart without adjusting the permissions. By default the files should upload with the permissions 0644 and the directories with 0755. If you web server supports writing with these permissions then you probably won't see the permission error message in the first place so you need to try changing the permissions to either 0664 for files and 0775 for directories or 0666 for files and 0777 for directories.

Once you change the permissions just refresh the page to see if that fixed the problem. Once the files and directories have the right permissions the error message will disappear and you will see the screen that looks like the this:



You can get your license key by logging into the client area at client area using the details that were emailed to you with your first invoice. If you've forgotten your password you can click the link just below the login fields to reset your password.

Once you have your license key all you need to type in is your email address, a password for your control panel administrator account (both of which you can change later), choose whether you want the sample products installed, and finally type in your MySQL details. Your store website URL should already be pre-filled.

Once you have typed in the details and clicked submit you will see a page like this:



If you click the Login Now button it will take you to your control panel login page where you can enter your login details and begin the process of setting up your store.

Getting Started

When you login for the first time you will see a dialog that shows a list of things you need to run through to get your store up and running. This list is available on the home page of the control panel but the basic steps are :
  1. Enter the settings for your store (available on the settings tab)
  2. Setup a checkout provider
  3. Setup a shipping provider
  4. Specify how you want tax handled
  5. Add some products (this step will already be completed if you have elected to import sample data during the installation wizard)
You may also want to setup your notification methods and add some content pages to your site. All of these are linked from the Getting Started with Interspire Shopping Cart section on the home page of the control panel.

If You Need Help

If you have any problems with installation, please post a support ticket from the client area and one of our support engineers can help make sure your store is up and running correctly.