Newb needs some help!

[RodG]

Hey guys! I'm very new to website building and ZenCart and was excited to start, but so far I'm floundering. At this point I've installed the latest version of Zen Cart through Cpanel.

Well, thats your problem right there. These 'one click installs' tend to be counter productive. You are MUCH off better doing a 'manual' install.

The problem is, when I try to go to the admin panel for Zen Cart (via the URL I was given after installation) I continually get the message 'Internet Explorer cannot display this page'.

Not enough information to tell us anything useful.

Does it tell you *why* it can't be displayed? File not found? Server not found. 500 server error? Other?

Please keep in mind that I am a complete newb (so there's probably something silly that I'm not seeing or doing) And before anyone says "Buy the e-book", I just dropped some major cash to start this site, so I can't afford to buy it for a little bit.

Major cash? How, on what? (feel free to tell me to mind my own business. It isn't relevent to your problem. I'm just curious).

Any help anyone could give would really help me out here.
Thanks!
Kurt

We MAY be able to help if we had more info, but seriously, although doing a manual install may *appear* to be a complex procedure, it really isn't, and doing so will eliminate all the problems caused by the one click installers.
Even if they did work correctly you must *never ever* use them to upgrade a site. They *will* mess things up.

Cheers
Rod

[dancersgrove]

Thanks guys! I will try doing the manual install, hopefully it will work for me.

[RodG]

Thanks guys! I will try doing the manual install, hopefully it will work for me.

Just try not to rush things, and take careful note of the various help and information screens that will be provided during the installation (all useful stuff that is kept 'hidden' from you with the 'one click installs'.

As this is your 1st install, I'd also recommend that you install the demo products (something else you don't get with the one click installs). These demo products go a long way to showing you how various functions of the store operate.

One word of warning though..... the thing that catches a lot of people out with their 1st attempt at the manual install, is that they neglect to create the zencart database *before* they start the actual installation (no need to create any tables, just the database itself, and a user account to access it. You CAN use the cPanel tools to do this. Take careful note of the database name, the username and the password that *you* supply when creating this DB/account, because you'll need to enter this data during the actual install process. Other than this, most installs go without a problem... at least in my experience.

Cheers
Rod.

ps. If you do run into problem/issues, don't be afraid of deleting everything and starting again. This is never a BAD thing (frustrating maybe). A 'bad' experience in these early days will often save you many hours of frustration in the future (due to the experience alone).