Many clients submitted support tickets about a common issue with OpenCart icons not being displayed properly on their websites when www is added to the domain address. In the most common case, the header icons look messy just like on our screenshot above.

Other clients experienced difficulties with their OpenCart admin login page being corrupted or with incorrect styling:

The issue is caused because of cross-domain policies when the frontend or the admin panel are accessed from a different address than the one configured in the OpenCart config files. For example, if you have installed your OpenCart for the address http://domain.com but you access your site via http://www.domain.com you will experience such issue.

The Solution

The solution to this is fairly simple. Open config.php file from OpenCart root folder as well as config.php from the admin folder and make sure HTTP_SERVER and HTTPS_SERVER point to www location. For example:

config.php - OpenCart root folder
// HTTP
define('HTTP_SERVER', 'http://www.example.com');

// HTTPS
define('HTTPS_SERVER', 'http://www.example.com');

config.php - OpenCart admin folder
// HTTP
define('HTTP_SERVER', 'http://www.example.com/admin/');
define('HTTP_CATALOG', 'http://www.example.com/');

// HTTPS
define('HTTPS_SERVER', 'http://www.example.com/admin/');
define('HTTPS_CATALOG', 'http://www.example.com/');

When you are done reconfiguring your OpenCart config files, put these lines into the .htaccess file located in the OpenCart root folder. If you don’t have that file, you’ll have to create it first.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]

In case you have enabled an SSL connection on your domain name, you would need to force all of the links to HTTPS.

config.php - OpenCart root folder
// HTTP
define('HTTP_SERVER', 'https://www.example.com');

// HTTPS
define('HTTPS_SERVER', 'https://www.example.com');

config.php - OpenCart admin folder
// HTTP
define('HTTP_SERVER', 'https://www.example.com/admin/');
define('HTTP_CATALOG', 'https://www.example.com/');

// HTTPS
define('HTTPS_SERVER', 'https://www.example.com/admin/');
define('HTTPS_CATALOG', 'https://www.example.com/');

When you are done re-configuring your OpenCart config files, put these lines into the .htaccess file located in the OpenCart root folder

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS_HOST} !^www\.
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]

These rules will redirect all non-www traffic to your domain www version to avoid the cross-domain conflict. Some additional difficulties you may experience due to the explained conflict are session lost after login and incomplete orders after PayPal check our due to incorrect call back URL settings. The above configuration should resolve all of the mentioned issues.

Need Assistance?

If you experience any difficulties to resolve this on your own, our technical support team will be glad to assist you in this matter. In case you are not a FastComet client, you may check our OpenCart hosting plans with free 24/7 technical support and free transfer.