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Setting up your downloaded store

Your store is an ordinary PHP website. There is no database to create, nothing to install and no build step — you upload the files, set two folders to be writable, and it runs. This guide walks through it in plain language, and every step is repeated in the README.txt inside your ZIP.

Prefer it in seven numbered steps, with pictures?

How It Works covers the same ground more briefly, in English or বাংলা. It also ships inside your ZIP as SETUP-GUIDE.html, so you can read it offline while you upload.

Open How It Works

What is in the ZIP

Unzipping the archive gives you a complete website. The shop your customers see sits at the top level, your own admin panel lives in the admin folder, your content sits in data as plain JSON files, and your product photos are in uploads. The theme folder holds the design you picked, and assets holds the stylesheet and a small amount of JavaScript.

Everything is yours. There is no licence check, no phone-home, and nothing that stops working if you never visit StoreForge Pro again. The LICENSE.txt in your ZIP sets out the terms and deliberately names no secret, because it stays readable over the web once the store is uploaded. Your licence key travels in data/settings.json, which the bundled .htaccess refuses to serve, and your own admin panel shows it under Settings — quote it to us if you ever ask for help.

What you need

Almost any shared hosting account works. You need PHP version 8.0 or newer, and that is essentially the whole list. Your store does not use MySQL, so you can ignore any database section in your hosting panel entirely. You do not need Node.js, Composer, SSH access or a VPS.

Works fine on

cPanel and Plesk shared hosting, most Bangladeshi hosting providers, DirectAdmin, and any VPS running Apache or Nginx with PHP 8.

Will not work on

Static-only hosts such as GitHub Pages or Netlify, and anything still running PHP 7. These cannot run PHP 8 code, so the pages would not render.

Putting it online

There are two comfortable ways to do this. Use whichever you already know.

Using your hosting control panel

  1. Sign in to cPanel (or Plesk) and open File Manager.
  2. Go into public_html. If you want the store on a subdomain, go into that subdomain's folder instead.
  3. Click Upload and pick your ZIP file. Wait for it to finish.
  4. Back in File Manager, right-click the ZIP and choose Extract. Extract it into the same folder.
  5. Delete the ZIP file afterwards so visitors cannot download your whole site.

Watch the folder depth. After extracting, you should see index.php directly inside public_html — not inside a second folder. If everything landed one level too deep, select all of it and move it up one folder.

Using FTP

Unzip the archive on your own computer first, then connect with FileZilla using the FTP details your host gave you, and drag everything inside the unzipped folder into public_html. FTP uploads thousands of small files one at a time, so give it a few minutes and let it finish before you visit the site.

When it's done, open your domain in a browser. You should see your homepage with your products on it.

Folder permissions

Your store saves orders, products and settings by writing to files, so two folders need to be writable by the web server: data and uploads.

In File Manager, right-click each of those two folders, choose Change Permissions, and set them to 755. Tick the box that applies the change to files inside as well. If your host is unusually strict and saving still fails, try 775. Only go to 777 if your host specifically tells you to — it is more open than most sites need.

The store ships with an .htaccess file in the data folder that blocks anyone from opening those files in a browser, so making the folder writable does not make your orders public.

Logging into your admin

Visit yourdomain.com/admin/ and sign in with the email and password you chose on the download page. That login is completely separate from your StoreForge Pro account — it lives inside your own store, and only you can change it.

Forgotten it? Open data/admin.json in File Manager, empty out the value of password_hash so it reads "", and save. The next time you open the admin panel it will ask you to set a new password. Do this only from your hosting panel, never leave it blank for long.

Your first five minutes

Your store already has your products, categories, colours and pages in it, so nothing is urgent. These are the settings most owners want to check on day one.

  • Delivery charges. Under Settings, set your flat delivery charge and the order value above which delivery is free. Both appear at checkout immediately.
  • Payment instructions. Write out how you want to be paid — your bKash or Nagad number, or bank details. Customers see this on the checkout page.
  • Contact details. Check the phone number and address in Settings, since they show in your footer and on the contact page.
  • Place a test order. Go through your own checkout once as a customer. It is the fastest way to see exactly what your buyers see.

How orders reach you

Customers do not need to register. They add items to the cart, enter their name, phone and address, and place the order — that is deliberate, because forcing sign-ups loses sales. Each order gets a number the customer can use, with their phone number, to track it on your Track Order page.

New orders appear in your admin panel under Orders with a status of Pending. As you work through an order you move it along: Confirmed, then Processing, then Shipped, then Delivered — or Cancelled if it falls through. Whatever you set is what the customer sees when they track it, so keeping statuses current saves you phone calls.

Orders are stored in data/orders.json. You can export them to a CSV from the Orders screen whenever you want them in a spreadsheet.

Backing up

Because everything lives in files, a backup is just a copy. Once a week, download the data and uploads folders to your computer. That is your entire shop: products, categories, orders, settings and photos.

Restoring is the same in reverse — upload those two folders back over the existing ones. Your admin panel also has a Backup screen that packages both folders into a single ZIP for you.

Changing host or domain

Nothing in the store is tied to a domain name or a server, so moving is a copy-and-paste job. Download every file from the old host, upload them all to the new one, set the two folder permissions again, and you are done. No re-licensing, no re-activation, no export or import step.

The same applies to changing your domain, or moving the store into a subfolder. Links inside the store are worked out relative to wherever it is installed, so both cases just work.

If something looks wrong

The page is completely blank

Nearly always an old PHP version. In cPanel, find "Select PHP Version" and set it to 8.0 or higher, then reload. If your host offers 8.1 or 8.2, those are fine too.

"Could not save" when I edit anything

The data folder is not writable. Set it to 755, and apply the change to the files inside it as well.

Product photos are not showing

Check that the uploads folder actually made it up during the upload — FTP transfers sometimes skip files. Re-upload that folder and confirm the file count matches what you have locally.

The design looks unstyled and plain

The stylesheet did not upload. Make sure the whole assets folder is present, then hard-refresh the page so your browser stops using its cached copy.

"500 Internal Server Error"

Usually the .htaccess file asking for something your host has switched off. Rename it to htaccess.txt, reload, and if the error clears, send us the contents and we'll tell you which line to remove.

I cannot log into /admin/

Use the email you typed on the download page, not your StoreForge Pro login. If you're sure of the email but not the password, use the reset described in Logging into your admin.

Common questions

Will my store stop working if I stop paying you?
No. You paid once for the store and it is yours. There is no subscription and no remote check of any kind.
Can I edit the code myself?
Yes, and it is written to be readable. It is plain PHP with no framework, no MVC layers and no build tools, so a developer who knows basic PHP can follow it.
How many products can it hold?
Comfortably a few thousand. Beyond that, file-based storage starts to feel slow on cheap shared hosting, and you'd be better served by a database-backed platform.
Can I change the theme after downloading?
Your ZIP contains the theme you chose. Colours, fonts and section order are all editable from your own admin panel. To switch to an entirely different design, change it here on StoreForge Pro and download again — there are 14 to choose from.
Does it work on phones?
Yes. Every page and every theme is built mobile-first, which matters because most Bangladeshi shoppers arrive on a phone.
Can I take online card payments?
The store handles cash on delivery and manual payment, where the customer sends money and you confirm it. That covers how most small shops here already work, and it means no gateway account or per-transaction fee.

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