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Before downloading or installing anything, you need to provide a home for your PrestaShop online store. This means its files need to reside on a Web server. You might have a Web server of your own, but it is more likely that you have or will have your shop hosted by an Internet hosting service (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_hosting_service), which provides you with an online home for a monthly or yearly fee.

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Registering a domain name

You may also want to buy a domain-name for your shop (meaning: mydomainname.com or myonlineshop.net). Many web hosts offer a free domain with every new account, but you could also buy one at an independent domain name registrar (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_registrar), most of the time for a yearly fee.

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FTP is short for "File Transfer Protocol", meaning the standard way used to transfer files from a computer to a web-host.

In this guide, we will use Filezilla, which is a great and free FTP client for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Download it from http://filezilla-project.org/ and start its installer. Note: do not download FileZilla Server, only FileZilla Client!

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Once FileZilla is installed, you will need to configure it with your site's log-in parameters, which should have been sent to you by your host. If not, ask for them to your host – or check your spam folder

Basically, the needed parameters are:

• a hostname or an IP address: the location of your hosting space's FTP server.
• a username: your hosting account identifier, which is unique to you.
• a password: obligatory security measure.

Open FileZilla, and open its Site Manager tool. You can do this in three different ways:

• Press Ctrl-S.
• Click the "Open the Site Manager" icon, at the top left.
• Open the "File" menu, and select the "Site Manager..." option.

A window opens.

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To add your hosting space to the Site Manager:

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, and 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.

Here are a few well-known FTP client:

• Windows
  • FilezillaCoreFTP: http://filezilla-project.orgwww.coreftp.com/
  • WinSCP: http://winscp.net/
  • SmartFTP: http://www.smartftp.com/
• Mac OS X
  • Cyberduck: http://cyberduck.ch/
  • Transmit: http://www.panic.com/transmit/
  • Fetch: http://fetchsoftworks.com/fetch/
• Unix/Linux
  • gFTP: http://gftp.seul.org/
  • cURLkasablanca: http://curlkasablanca.haxxberlios.sede/
  • NcFTP: http://www.ncftp.com/ncftp/

Making a plan

You might want to know right away were you'd rather host PrestaShop. There are four possibilities relating to your domain name:

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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+MySQL+PHP and the operating system, giving WAMP (Windows+Apache+MySQL+PHP), MAMP (Mac OS X+...) 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:

• XAMPP: http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris)
• WampServer: http://www.wampserver.com/en/ (Windows)
• EasyPHP: http://www.easyphp.org/ (Windows)
• MAMP: http://www.mamp.info/ (Mac OS X)

Choose the package that you feel the most comfortable with, launch it, and make sure that everything it has installed does work before going on with this PrestaShop 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 which directs 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. Its 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 package's 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 or /Applications/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.

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