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Whether you are a computer expert or a novice, the PrestaShop™ e-Commerce solution lets enables you take any business online.

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You may also want to buy a domain-name for your shop. Many web host hosts offer a free domain with every new account, but you could also buy one at an independent domain name registrar.

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More information are available for system administrators in the System Administrators Guide.

Installing PrestaShop on your local machine

This guide is targeted at users wishing to install PrestaShop on a remote server/host.

You may wish to install on your local machine, either in order to test PrestaShop before investing money in a server and domain name, or to customize your shop locally before you push your modifications to the PrestaShop installation that would already you have online.

Installing any web-application locally requires that you first install the adequate environment, namely the Apache web server, the PHP language interpreter, the MySQL database server, and ideally the phpMyAdmin tool. This is called an AMP package: Apache+PHP+MySQL and the operating system, giving WAMP (Windows+Apache+PHP+MySQL), MAMP (Mac+...) and LAMP (Linux+...). Since all of the items packaged are open-source, these installers are most of the time free.

This would require you to be quite technical, luckily there exist many pre-built packages that you can install easily. It does not prevent you from having to get technical here and there, but they do provide a huge help. Here is a selection of free AMP installer:

Choose the package the you feel the most comfortable with, install it, and make sure that it does work before going on with this installation tutorial:

  • The web server should be up and running. You should be able to access it through your browser, by typing "127.0.0.1" in the address bar. 127.0.0.1 is the "localhost", meaning "your computer": it is a loopback address that direct the browser to any local server. In effect, 127.0.0.1 and localhost are synonymous: you can use one or the other interchangeably.
  • The database server should be up and running. MySQL is where all your data is stored. The AMP package should provide you with a clear indicator whether MySQL is running or not.
  • The phpMyAdmin tool should be accessible. This is the web application that helps you handle data stored in MySQL. It's location depends on which AMP packaging you chose: it can be found at 127.0.0.1/phpmyadmin (XAMPP, WampServer, MAMP), 127.0.0.1/mysql (EasyPHP), or maybe at another location. Check your packages documentation – it might even provide a phpMyAdmin button of sort that would open the correct URL in your browser.

Once you have checked that the package is correctly installed and that all of its parts are running, you need to find the root folder. That's the local folder where you will place your files, and can be compared to the root folder of your online server, only its content is accessed with 127.0.0.1. The actual local location of the folder depends greatly on the AMP package, and can be customized:

  • XAMPP: C:\xampp\htdocs
  • WampServer: C:\wamp\www
  • EasyPHP: C:\easyphp\www
  • MAMP: /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/

Finally, you need to know the root user name and password for MySQL, in order to install PrestaShop. Most packages use the user name "root" with an empty password. Read your package's documentation.

With all that clear and done, you can follow up on the rest of this documentation, keeping in my that files are not to be uploaded via FTP to a server, but simply to be moved in the correct local folder.

Installing PrestaShop

Downloading and unzipping the PrestaShop archive

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Three choices are available to you:

  • the latest version (1.4.4.1 62 as of this writing): a stable version, ready for all websites.
  • a stable version with a free trial for a PrestaShop partner tool (Store Manager).
  • (at the bottom of the page) the alpha version (1.5.0.3 as of this writing): in heavy development, it is only available for testing purposes, NOT for production. Use at your own risk.

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Click on either of the stable versions' download buttons, and save the archive on your computer (such as on the desktop). You should get a file named "prestashop_1.4.46.12.zip" (or an equivalent, depending on the version numbers).

Tip

The downloaded file is an archive, meaning one file containing all of PrestaShop's files in compressed form. In order to continue with the process, you must uncompress the archive. If your operating system does not natively support Zip files, you can download and install a free tool, such as 7-zip.

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  1. Click the "New Site" button. A new entry is created in the site list. Give it a recognizable name.
  2. On the right side, in the "General" tab, enter the parameters your host provided you with: host, user, password. You should not have to change the other default parameters, unless told so by your host.
  3. Once all the fields are properly filled, click the "Connect" button. This will both save your site in the list, and log you into your account, so that you can make sure everything works right.

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  1. Select the language in which you wish the installer to be.
  2. Select whether you wish to install or update PrestaShop (if this is your first time, you can only install).
  3. Read the PrestaShop license (the Open Software License 3.0), and agree to it.

To access the next step, you must check the "I agree to the above terms and conditions" box, then click "Next". If you do not explicitly agree to the license, you cannot install PrestaShop.

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