Install ShopClass

ShopClass installs the way PHP applications have always installed: unpack a release into your web root and open the site in a browser. There is no build step, no bundler and no command line required on the server.

Server requirements

Requirement	Minimum
PHP	8.0 or newer
PHP extensions	mysqli, gd, curl, mbstring, openssl, zip, json, ctype, fileinfo, posix
Database	MySQL 5.7+ or MariaDB 10.2+
Web server	Apache or nginx

Almost every shared host meets this today. If you are not sure, run the installer anyway — its first step checks all of it and tells you exactly what is missing before anything is written.

1. Download a release

Download the latest package from the Releases page.

Install from a release, never from a branch

master and develop may contain untested code, and they do not carry the compiled admin CSS and JavaScript that a release package includes. A site deployed from a branch will look broken in the admin panel.

2. Unpack it into your web root

Upload and extract the package into the directory your domain serves — usually public_html, htdocs or /var/www/html.

You can also install into a subdirectory (public_html/classifieds), in which case your site lives at https://example.com/classifieds/.

3. Create a database

From your hosting control panel, create an empty MySQL/MariaDB database and a user with full privileges on it. Note the four values down — the installer asks for them next:

• database host (usually localhost)
• database name
• database user
• database password

If your database listens on a non-default port, enter the host as host:port.

4. Run the installer

Open your site in a browser — https://example.com/ — and the installer starts automatically. If it does not, go straight to https://example.com/oc-includes/osclass/install.php.

Step 1 · Check server

The installer confirms your PHP version, the required extensions and folder write permissions up front, so nothing fails halfway through. Fix anything flagged here before continuing.

Step 2 · Connect database

Enter the details from step 3 and press Test connection to confirm they work before anything is written. On success, the installer writes config.php for you and creates the schema.

Step 3 · Your site

Pick an admin username, your site title, a contact e-mail and your country. Leave the password field blank and a strong one is generated for you.

Step 4 · Done

Copy the admin password — it is also e-mailed to you — and open the admin panel.

5. Sign in

Your admin panel is at https://example.com/oc-admin/.

The installer only runs once. If the site is already set up it shows a short notice instead of re-running.

After installing

A fresh install works, but three things are worth doing on day one:

1. Set up cron — without it, e-mail alerts never send and expired listings never expire.
2. Configure your mail server — registration and contact e-mails depend on it.
3. Install location data for the countries you serve, so visitors can filter by region and city.

Installing without a browser

If you deploy from a script or a container image, ShopClass can install itself from environment variables:

php oc-cli.php install --unattended

See the command-line interface for the full flag list.

Troubleshooting

The installer says a directory is not writable. Give the web-server user write access to the paths it names — typically oc-content/ and its uploads/ and downloads/ subdirectories. On most hosts 755 on directories is enough; 777 is almost never necessary and is worth avoiding.

“Allowed memory size of X bytes exhausted”. See increase the PHP memory limit.

The site loads but every link 404s. Your web server is not rewriting URLs. On Apache, confirm mod_rewrite is enabled and that AllowOverride All applies to your web root so the shipped .htaccess is read. On nginx, add the try_files rule from the repository’s reference config.

Something else. Ask in GitHub Discussions — include your PHP version, your host, and what the screen actually said.