We browse to the http://www.opencart.com/index.php?route=download/download link. This page will list the latest OpenCart version. The download page is similar to the following screenshot.

Let's click on the link and choose the Save File option to save it in the computer:

Let's open File Manager utility at cPanel.

It will choose the Web Root as default. We will continue with the Go button.

Let's click on the Upload link.

Let's choose OpenCart ZIP file using the Browse button on the next screen. After the upload completes, we return back to the main cPanel File Manager screen.

We will right-click on the file and select Extract.

It will open a pop-up window. Just press the Extract File(s) button to decompress the ZIP file into the root web folder.

All files were extracted into a folder named opencart_v1.7.

We will need to browse into this folder first. We see a folder called upload under it. We will need to rename it as store at first.

Right-click on it and choose Rename from the menu.

Rename the directory as store, as in the following screenshot:

We will need to move the renamed store directory to the root. Let's right-click on the store directory and choose Move from the menu.

Change the destination directory as /public_html/ and click on Move File(s) button.

Right-click on the previously downloaded OpenCart file on your computer and click Extract Here option.

As a result, we will have a folder named opencart_v1.7 with the structured folders and files inside.

We will create a directory named as store on the root of the website using the ftp Make Directory command.

Upload all the files and the subfolders in opencart_v1.7/upload folder to the web host in the/store folder. We use a free FTP client software called CoreFTP, which can be downloaded at http://www.coreftp.com/. Choose all the files and folders in the directory from the left panel and drag and drop into the right panel where the web root folder exists. In most cases, it is /www folder. So, our destination is /www/store.

The following screenshot shows the process before dragging and droping the files:

And the screenshot after uploading the files to the folder named as store is as follows:

Notice that it is a time consuming process since there are many files in OpenCart system. Let's wait until all the files are uploaded to the web server.

We should be sure that the following directories and config files are writeable, meaning that their permissions are set to at least 755. We can check this by using cPanel file manager.

The following screenshot shows that all these directories are set to 755 properly, but config.php file is not set to 755:

So, let's open cPanel file manager and right-click on config.php file. Let's select Change Permissions:

Set Permission level to 755. Click the Change Permissions button.

We must repeat this process for all the folders listed below including the subfolders and files inside one by one if not set correctly to 755:

Click on MySQL Databases link on cPanel:

Enter a name for the database. Here, we named the database as opencart. Then, click on the Create Database button.

If we are on a share hosting, a prefix will be added automatically to the name we provided. This is generally the username which we use to log in to the cPanel. So, your database name will follow the template of cPanelLogin_databasename.

Take a note of the database name including the prefix.

Now, let's create a user and assign this user to our newly created database. We go back from database creation result page and jump to MySQL Users section.

Choose a username and password. Repeat the password on the last text box and be sure that the password is not very easy to guess for security preferably a mixture of letters and numbers.) We have chosen dbuser as the username. Click on the Create User button after filling all the required textboxes.

Please note that a prefix will be added to the user as well. Take a note of the username.

We need to add user to the database as the last step. Choose the newly created user and database for OpenCart, and then click the Add button.

In this step, we are going to assign privileges for the user in the database. Select the All Privileges option, and then press the Make Changes button to give all the privileges to the user.

The following screenshot shows the result page after clicking the Make Changes button:

Let's browse the domain name where we put OpenCart files. In our example, it is http://yourwebsite.com/store. You should use your own OpenCart path. We will be redirected to a License screen automatically. Click Continue to start.

OpenCart will control several installation requirements, including PHP settings and extensions.

Then, the permissions of several files and directories are checked. If there are no errors, all we have to do is click the Continue button.

In this step, we will supply the database connection information to OpenCart system. First, we should provide the previously created MySQL user and password for User and Password fields. Then, fill the MySQL database name in the Database Name field.

Finally, we should choose a Username, Password, and Email to be used to log in and manage the OpenCart system.

Let's ignore the Database Prefix option.

"After filling in all the required fields, click on the Continue button.

Even though the following screen has informed us that we have finished, we actually have not!

For security purposes, we must delete the installation directory. Then, we should check the online storefront and administration screens to be sure that everything is working in the default settings.

Let's open cPanel file manager again and browse to /store folder. Let's find install folder. We will right-click on it and choose Delete from the menu.

The next step is to confirm the deletion of the install folder. Let's click on the Delete File(s) button.

Let's browse to http://yourwebsite.com/store, the online shop storefront. We can see a pre-populated sample store that is similar to the following screenshot:

Let's browse to the OpenCart administration screen at http://yourwebsite.com/store/admin and log in by using our admin username and password.

We will see an administration screen similar to the following screenshot:

Congratulations! Our OpenCart installation is now complete.