Zen cart install

Hello I am new at installing the zen cart. I will be purchasing the manual next month. But right now I am having trouble with installing the zen cart. I am using Hostgator for my host. I accidently installed the zen cart over my existing site. Which killed it.:oops: No back up is available. Now that I am done having my breakdown. I have to get this done. I want to do this myself. This is for my other site. How do I start and where do I upload the files to? Is there a folder I should make on my new site to upload them to?

I would like to get this up and running by next week.

hugs
Tarot Gal

Hi

I'm hoping that you have found an answer by now, if not here are a few pointers based on my own limited experience.
First of all, do you know how to transfer files by FTP?
Secondly, make sure that you have hosting that (at least) allows PHP and MySQL.

I would recommend searching through the zencart sponsored links for hosts that supply hosting with zencart installed, ideally this wants to be Linux hosting. Linux hosting is a much more straightforward option for installing ZenCart, it's often cheaper and arguably more powerful than W**dows hosting <-- that's in my humble opinion for all the MS fans out there.

I would recommend downloading Filezilla as your FTP program and getting Linux hosting. This should be easy in the States, it certainly is here in the UK.

Download the latest ZenCart and unzip it into its own folder on your hard drive. Once you have sorted out your hosting (remember you will need SSL (secure Socket Layer) if you want to allow people to buy from your ZenCart store.

Use FileZilla to transfer the files to the correct location on your webserver (sometimes something like /htdocs/ but it depends on how the webserver is set up.

If you want regular html pages on your site and use the store in the background, ie, promote your goods and services on regular XHTML pages and allow links to your store, do not use the root folder of the webserver, make a subdirectory for the ZenCart installation. For example

../htdocs/(this is where your xhtml files would go)

../htdocs/store/(this is where your unzipped ZenCart files would go)

where ../htdocs/ is the 'root' of your webserver (remember it may have a different name).

If you do not understand any or all of the terms SSL, FTP and Linux hosting then you will need to do some basic background research. I only say this because all of the above assumes that you do.

Best of luck if you have not succeeded already.