All of my blogs on customising and editing OpenCart up until this point have relied on carefully changing OpenCart’s core files. This is a bit riskier than most OpenCart developers would like but in this post I’ll be showing you how to install vQmod onto an OpenCart store which allows you to make changes to how the system behaves or looks without having to change any of the controller or template files.

By installing vQmod on your system you just make changes with an XML file which acts to remove and replace core parts of the functionality. A lot of modules for OpenCart also have a simple XML file which you can use instead of installing all the controller and template files and risking overwriting previous changes.

Luckily the system is really easy to install, if you installed OpenCart or PrestaShop software manually on your web host then you will already be familiar with the process and it doesn’t take much technical knowledge. It does however require that you have access to your websites FTP details so if you don’t have them already then contact your OpenCart web host and get them before carrying on.

Downloading vQmod For OpenCart

Right, the first thing to concentrate on is downloading the most recent version of vQmod for your OpenCart store. There is a Google Code depository which provides a safe and current download which you can find at this link:

• http://code.google.com/p/vqmod/

Find the one which has the highest number for the most recent version and has the word “OpenCart” in it to make sure you don’t get the generic one which, as far as I can tell, isn’t very good. So, download the ZIP file and unpack it on your computer to be left with some folder which a catchy name like “vqmod-2.1.6-opencart”. Just open it up and you should see another folder called “vqmod” which you will need to upload to your store.

Uploading vQmod To Your OpenCart Store

Go to your FTP software and open it up to your OpenCart root folder (by that I mean just the first folder which has your Opencart folders in usually you can see ones named “catalog”, “image” & “download”) and upload the “vqmod” folder to that as well. Nice and easy!

Installing vQmod On OpenCart

OK, the final part of this is to actually install the software itself! All you need to do is go to:

• www.[YOUR DOMAIN].com/vqmod/install

Then, if all goes well, you should be faced with the highly visual success message as shown in the screenshot below:

And that’s it! I bet you can’t believe it was that easy! From now on you can upload your XML vQmod files to the www.[YOUR DOMAIN.com]/vqmod/xml folder and the system will automatically override the default settings to perform whatever actions your XML files want. I would remind you that if you update your OpenCart version you may have to find the most recent versions of your XML files or they might not work anymore.