Earlier when mirroring a Zen Cart online store for a customer to work on some custom modifications for him I ran into an error when attempting to visit the site in a web browser. The issue relates to Rewrite rules in the .htaccess file which I was able to easily track down by viewing the Apache error logs for the site. Below is more information regarding the error located in the logs and how I was able to resolve the problem.
I always forget specific MySQL syntax including creating a MySQL user and granting that user specific access only via localhost to a specific database. So when I install Zen Cart I always end up looking how to do this via the MySQL documentation. Below are simple instructions on how to create a MySQL database using mysqladmin, create a MySQL user, and grant permission to the created database to the created MySQL user.
A client of mine contacted me earlier because he was unable to add products to his Zen Cart store. I recently installed a couple modules for him and was thinking that the issue may be related to one of the modules however this did not end up being the case. After some investigation I was able to resolve the problem easily by first deleting a product that had been added and then by issuing a SQL command to modify the auto increment numbers for the Zen Cart products table. Below there is more information on the error as well as details on how to resolve the issue.
Earlier I was working on a Zen Cart site and ran into an issue installing the Ultimate SEO URL add-on. The Ultimate SEO URL add-on creates more SEO(Search Engine Optimization) friendly URL’s for Zen Cart. The site in question already had a previous version of the Ultimate SEO URL add-on installed and once I was finished the front-end of the site was working perfectly with the new SEO friendly URL’s. The problem was when I attempted to login to the admin portion of the Zen Cart site I was receiving a “500 – Internal Server Error” message. Below I have noted information on what was done to troubleshoot the problem as well as how the problem was resolved.
I started some work on a online store today that is using Zen Cart open source e-commerce software to power the store. I love Zen Cart, which initially was branched off of osCommerce, to power online stores and have used Zen Cart or osCommerce to power online stores for going on a decade. The first thing you should always do when beginning work on an already established site is get all of the information about the software(Zen Cart, osCommerce, WordPress, etc.) that runs the web site and the software used to power the site(MySQL, PostgreSQL, Apache, Litespeed, etc.). Zen Cart makes the initial task of obtaining information about the site and some of the server software fairly easy. Use the information below to obtain the Zen Cart version.