I’ve just been going through my first ‘Instant’ book from Packt Publishing - Instant E-Commerce with OpenCart: Build a Shop [Instant] by Murat Yilmaz. They kindly sent me a copy to review, so here’s a quick summary of what to expect and what’s included:

This book is for web developers and designers looking at setting up an online store. You don’t need any previous experience of OpenCart to follow the walkthroughs in the book, but you will need to be reasonably confident (or at least willing to have a bash) at downloading and setting up a web application on a server or a local development environment (such as WAMP for MS Windows or MAMP for Mac).

The book covers a range of simple and intermediate tasks, from installing and setting up OpenCart on your server to managing customers and orders. The author takes you through setting up, running and managing an online musical instrument store. It’s presented very much in a structured tutorial way, with easy to follow steps and plenty of screenshots (on pretty much every page) showing what to expect, so even if you’re not sitting in front of your screen you can still experience the process. Some of the areas covered include:

  • Installation and setup
  • Adding categories, products and product attributes
  • Adding tax information
  • General shop configuration
  • Payment models and PayPal integration
  • Adding shipping methods
  • Changing layouts and templates
  • Backing up and restoring your shop data

Overall, it’s a neat introduction to OpenCart and should give you enough confidence to have a go at setting up an online shop. If you’re not sure which online shop software to use, it will give you a good flavour of the capabilities of OpenCart so you can decide if it’s right for your project. It’s only 70 pages long, so don’t expect every detail to be covered, but if you’re looking for an introduction or would just like to have an overview of what you can do with OpenCart it should have you covered.

‘Instant E-commerce with OpenCart: Build a Shop [Instant]’ on Packt Publishing’s website

Disclaimer: I was asked by Packt Publishing to review this book, but all opinions are my own and I’ve tried to be as objective as possible. I hope you find it helpful if you’re looking for a book on OpenCart.