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Designer Guide

Anyone with knowledge of CSS and image manipulation can create a new theme for PrestaShop.

Tip

We recommend using the following tool:

  • Firefox: Firebug for easy comparison and debugging between your CSS and the output.
  • Firefox/Chrome: Web Developer adds many handy web developer tools to your browser.
  • Safari/Chrome: enable the Web Inspector.
  • Opera: Dragonfly, a fully-featured debugging environment.
  • Internet Explorer 8+: Developer Tools are available through the Tools menu.

Internet Explorer can make use of Firebug lite.

Follow the following steps below to create a new theme for PrestaShop.

1. Copy the default theme

  1. Locate the ../themes directory in your PrestaShop install, and create a copy of the default ../themes/prestashop/ directory.
  2. Rename the duplicate.

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2. Modify the CSS sheet

  • In the new theme folder (e.g., ../themes/MyStoreTheme/), locate the /css folder.
  • Open the global.css file and modify it according to your needs. This is you are only limited by your creativity – and your knowledge of CSS.
    Note: the maintenance.css file, located in the same folder, controls the layout of the Maintenance Mode page.
  • New or modified images must be placed in the new theme's /img folder (e.g., ../themes/MyStoreTheme/img).
Tip
titleTips from the PrestaShop development team
  • Where possible, use CSS instead of HTML (e.g., only use tables for tabular data, not for layout).
  • Validate your XHTML and CSS code using the W3C tools: HTML validator, CSS validator.
  • Reduce images and pictures size by using compression
  • Test your theme on several Web browsers, not only Internet Explorer. Firefox, WebKit browsers (Safari, Chrome) and Opera are all to be considered, but you should most of all check that it works well the browsers your website is mostly visited with. If your website has not launched yet, have a look at your country browser stats. For instance, here are the browser stats for France, from 2010 to 2011.
  • Keep filenames in lowercase.
  • Remember that the homepage text and logo are modifiable directly via the Back Office. Go to Back Office >> Modules >> Home text editor and click Configure.

3. Create a preview screen shot

Once your theme is ready, you must place a file representing the theme, called preview.jpg, in the theme’s root folder (e.g., ../themes/MyStoreTheme). This file must be a 100 × 100 pixels .jpg file.

4. Test your theme

  1. Go to Back Office >> Preferences >> Appearance >> Themes section.
  2. Select the new theme and click Save..

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Share your themes!

Show off your hard work, get feedback, and build your reputation by sharing your theme in the Themes section of our Forum!

You can also sell theme to PrestaShop users through our Addons website!The default PrestaShop install offers a neutral theme in shades of gray, enabling sellers to quickly and freely start their activity, whatever their business line.

More than 700 themes are available through the PrestaShop Addons marketplace. They were created either by the PrestaTeam or the PrestaShop community, and are sold at reasonable prices – some even free.

As a graphic designer/web developer, you too can put your themes up for sale on the PrestaShop Addons site, and earn 70% of the selling price.

Anyone with some knowledge of CSS and image manipulation can create a custom theme for PrestaShop. Provided you know PHP as well, you can build a whole new theme for your shop. Thanks to a tried and tested theme system, any shop can quickly sport a theme tailored to its needs.

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Training

PrestaShop also offers a complete training program tailored for designers. Contact us through this page: http://www.prestashop.com/en/training