Table of content

Understanding Local Settings

As obvious as it might seem, this is the Internet, and people from all over the world will certainly visit your shop, and order your products. As a shop owner, you must cater for as many customers as possible. This means having your website fully translated in as many languages as necessary, with local taxes, weights and currency units, local geographical zones, etc.

The "Localization" tab appeared with PrestaShop 1.5, and brings together many local settings and tools that used to be scattered in other tabs in previous versions.

Localization

The main page under the "Localization" tab enables you to configure the units used for your products.

Import Localization Pack

This section provides you with an extensive list of existing localization packs which you can import. Not only does it set your PrestaShop install with your proper local units, but it also adds many other data:

• States. When shipping product to a country, knowing which state it is sent to can prove important, as this might have an impact on local customs and taxes. The added states can be seen and edited in the "States" page under the "Localization" tab.
• Taxes. The real importance of localization is local taxes, and they can be numerous and varied depending on the country or the state. PrestaShop provides you with a basic support for the major taxes and tax rules. The added taxes and tax rules can be seen and edited in the "Tax" and "Tax rules" pages under the "Localization" tab.
• Currencies. Foreign customers will appreciate to be able to convert the prices on your shop into their own currency. You should at least have US dollars and Euros available along of your country's own currency (if not one of those two). Once added, you must activate a new currency using the "Currencies" page under the "Localization" tab, and make sure the conversion rate is correct. The added currencies can be seen and edited in that "Currencies" page.
• Languages. All the public fields on your shop can be created in multiple language, and it is important you do so for your products name and description, at the very least. Note that importing a language also imports its date format (d/m/Y, m/d/Y, d.m.Y, ...), among other things. The added currencies can be seen and edited in that "Languages" page under the "Localization" tab.
• Units. Weight, dimension, volume, distance: as many information that are essential both for describing a product to your costumers, and for your own packaging information. These units can seen and edited on this very page, in the "Localization" section.

As you can see, these additional data are optional: you can choose to import the currency and language for a given country, and not its taxes, for instance.

While you should not add too many local data for fear of overwhelming both yourself and your customers with it, it may be useful to import the localization pack for your most visited countries (according to your stats).

Apart from the default units, you cannot automatically remove all the data for a given country; if you need to remove data, you will have to do so manually, in their respective pages under the "Localization" tab.

Configuration

This section groups four default local settings, of prime importance:

• Default language. This is the main language for your shop. This setting will influence your back-office's language (including the main language for your products), as well as the front-office. Note that depending on the browser's settings, the front-office's languages might adapt to the setting of the customer's browser.
• Default country. The location of your business. If you have headquarters in many countries, use your main or original country.
• Default currency. The currency in which your product's prices are first set. Currencies are added by importing and activating a country's currency. Note that if you change currency after having already set a few product prices, you will have to manually update all the existing prices. Make sure to set that value once and for all.
• Time Zone. You own time zone. This is useful for daily discount for instance: you know exactly when it starts and ends.

Localization

The physical units presented in this section (weight, distance, volume, dimension) are used both in your product sheets, and for your own packaging needs – and ultimately, is essential in your relationship with your carrier.

These values can be set when you import the localization package for a country, but you can edit manually them afterwards. For instance, if you'd rather have centiliters instead of liters for the volume unit, change the default "L" to "cL".

The values should be unit symbols from the International System of Units (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units).

Advanced

This last section asks you to set your server's local language and country, as ISO code:

• For the language: ISO 639 code (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_639).
• For the country: ISO 3166 code (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2).

These values can be set when you import the localization package for a country, but you can edit manually them afterwards.

Languages

PrestaShop comes multilingual out of the box: there are 5 default languages (English, French, Spanish, Deutsch and Italian), and many more are available to download.

The "Languages" page manages the languages you'll see in your back office and your shop.

The page displays the languages already installed on your shop, along with a few information: ISO code, language code, date format (short and full). You can enable or disable a language by clicking on the icon in the "Enabled" column.

Adding a new language is simply a question of important the localization pack from a country which uses that language (in the "Localization" page). If it turns out this does not work, or that you need something customized, you can add a new language manually, using the form behind the "Add new" button.

Adding A New Language

In order to add a new language, you must fill as many of the form's field as possible:

• Name. The name is public. If you are creating that language for regional purpose, you may indicate that in the name: "French (Quebec)", for instance.
• ISO code. Enter the adequate 2-letter ISO 639-1 code. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_639-1_codes for more information.
  If you are importing a language pack, this code should exactly match the one for the pack.
• Language code. Enter the adequate 4-letter languages code, in the form xx-yy, xx being the language ISO code (same as above), and yy the country ISO code, using ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IETF_language_tag for more information.
• Date format. Countries do not always share the same date representation (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_format_by_country). Hence, when your shop display 02/08/12, a customer from France will understand "August 2nd, 2012" whereas one from the US will understand "February 8th, 2012" – and a japan customer might even read it as "August 12th, 2002". This is why it is important to indicate the date format tied to your language. The letters used should be that of PHP's date() function: http://php.net/manual/en/function.date.php.
• Date format. Same as the date format above, but including the hour-minute format.
• Flag. Upload an image of the flag of the language you want to add. It should be 16*11 pixels. You recommend you use the free FamFamFam Flags image set: http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/flags/.
• No-picture" image. Upload an image which will be displayed when a product does not yet have a picture. That image is simply a blank image, with "No image" or "No image available" in this language. The picture should be 250*250 pixels. You can find existing "No-picture" images in the \img\l directory of your PrestaShop installation.
• Is RTL language. Some languages are written from right to left, most notably those using Arabic script or the Hebrew alphabet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-left). When a PrestaShop theme is well coded, it is able to handle RTL languages - provided it is clearly set as such.
• Status. You may disable a new language until you are ready to translate everything.

Once your language is saved and enabled, you can import its language pack. This is done in the "Translations" page, under the "Localization" tab. Use the "Import a language pack manually" tool.

Finally, make sure everything works: go to your shop's front-office and click on the flags at the top. Similarly, customers can now select an additional language by using these icons.

Zones

PrestaShop's zones are a list of the world's subregions. It helps categorize countries.

If needed, you can create more zones, by clicking, as usual, on "Add New".

All you need is a name and a status.

Countries

PrestaShop must know all existing countries in order for customers to clearly indicate their own.

At the bottom of the page, you can set the default country for your shop.

Normally, PrestaShop comes with all current countries in the database. But in the scenario that new ones appear, you would need to add a new country. Click "Add New" to do so.

• Enter the name of the country that you would like to add.
• Enter its ISO-3166 code, which you can found on the official ISO page.
• Enter its international call code, which you can found on this Wikipedia page.
• Indicate its default currency. You can use your shop's default currency (as set in the Payments > Currencies sub-tab), or one of the other default currencies. Remember that if needed, you can add a new currency to your shop using that sub-tab.
• Indicate its zone, the world's subregion to which this country is attached. If necessary, you can add new zones using the Shipping > Zones sub-tab.
• Indicate whether a user signing up with the address must give a zip code or not.
  • You may also give more detail on the format of the postal code (or zip code). If you don't put anything, PrestaShop won't verify the validity of the zip code when given a new address for this country.
  • Use the following codes for the postal code: "L" for a letter, "N" for a number and "C" for the country's ISO code (the one which you entered in the ISO field above).
  • You can rely on this Wikipedia page if you do not know the postal code format. Make sure you do NOT copy/paste the notation from Wikipedia, but to adapt it! For instance, Wikipedia indicates "AAA 9999*" for Malta, so the notation for PrestaShop becomes "LLL NNNN" (without the final *).
• Give details about the address layout. You can click on the various helper links on the side of the text-field in order to add more fields. In live usage, they are automatically replaced by PrestaShop with the data from the customer's account.
• Enabled or disabled it. A disabled country will not be offered as an option when your customers want to register and create an account.
• Indicate if it contains "states". This adds a new field to the PrestaShop address form. Note that "states" can be regions, provinces, departments... anything that makes sense to that country's postal service.
• Indicate if the country needs a Tax Identification Number, and if its tax label should be displayed or not.
• Save: you're done creating a country!

States

By "States", PrestaShop calls first-level administrative divisions of a country. In the United-States, they are called states; in Italy, it's regioni (singular: regione); in France, it's régions (regions); in the United-Kingdom, it's regions. By default, PrestaShop provides you with a set of states: the 50 US states, the 13 Canadian provinces and territories, 24 Argentinian provincias, and 110 Italian province (singular: provincia).

Having states properly defined in your database helps better represent the delivery possibilities of your carriers. It is therefore important to enter all of a given country's administrative divisions if they are important to your carriers. You can find a list of such divisions on this Wikipedia page.

Note: the PrestaShop address form currently only lists states are available for the customer to choose. Therefore, make sure to use a sensible list when adding content to your states list. That is the reason why, for instance, the list contains Italian province rather than regioni.

Let's create a new state. Click "Add New" to get to the creation form.

• Enter the name of the state.
• Enter its ISO-3166-2 code:
  • Go to this Wikipedia page
  • Click the state's country two-letter code (in the "Entry" column of the main table),
  • On that page, find the state's code (it should be in a list on the page, or in the text for the smallest countries),
  • If there is one, remove the country's prefix in order to keep the code under 4 characters. For instance, the full ISO 3166-2 for Devon, in the United Kingdom, is "GB-DEV". Simply use "DEV" as the state's ISO code – it already is attached to the country using PrestaShop's "Country" drop-down menu (see next step).
• Indicate its country using the drop-down menu.
• Indicate its geographical zone using the drop down menu.
• Choose its status.
• Save.

Currencies

PrestaShop can accept a large number of currencies. By default, there are three standard currencies: The Euro, the Dollar, and the Pound. However, you can add and configure new currencies by clicking on the "Currencies" sub-tab, under the "Payment" tab.

Click on "Add New" to create a new currency and fill out the form (see the next page).

Currencies options

The two last sections of the "Currencies" sub-tab are very simple:

• Currencies options: set the default currency for your shop.
• Update currency rates: update your currencies exchange rates.

Adding a New Currency

When you want to add another currency, simply click on the "Add New" button seen in the previous screenshot, and this form will appear:

• Write the name of the currency, its ISO code (see this Wikipedia page for information) and its symbol (see this Wikipedia page for information).
• The conversion rate is defined according to your shop's default currency.
• Formatting: Set up how you want your price to be displayed. The X corresponds to the currency symbol. The "Blank" selector also enables you to include a blank between the sign and the price.

Once the new currency is added, click "Save" to save your settings

Tax Rules

Be default, a tax applies to all groups and countries/states/zones. If you wish to apply a particular tax to a country or set of countries (and not some others), you must create a tax rule for it. To that end, go to the "Tax Rules" sub-tab.

A few sample tax rules are already in place, which you can edit to get a better grasp of how things work. Let's create a new tax rule altogether. Click on "Add New".

• Fill in the name of the tax rules. Use a telling name: name the tax's country code, the tax's name, maybe even its rate, so as to find it again easily.
• Enable the rule once you are ready to have it used on the store... that is, once all countries have been properly set.
• Select the countries the tax should be applied to:
  • Browse the regions tabs until you find the targeted country,
  • If you need the tax applied to a single country, use that country's drop-down menu to apply the tax to country only. If needed, do the same for more countries.
  • If you need the tax applied to all countries for a given region EXCEPT a single country, then first apply the tax to all countries by using the drop-down menu at the top and clicking apply, then change the individual drop-down menu to "No tax" for the targeted country. If needed, do the same for more countries.
• Click on the "Save" button at the bottom of the countries list.

Note that the default rate applied to your product will be based on your store's default country.

Taxes

The "Taxes" sub-tab, located under the "Payment" tab, enables you to manage the applicable taxes. Click on this tab to see the list of taxes. Three taxes are set up by default.

Taxes options

This sub-tab also gives you access to a set of options, which apply to the whole store and all of the orders.

• Whether or not taxes are included in each purchase.
• Whether or not taxes are displayed in the cart.
• Which customer address should the tax be based on.
• Whether or not an ecotax applies (read this Wikipedia page to learn more about the ecotax).

If an ecotax does apply, a new field will appear in the product creation page:

If you decide to take the ecotax in consideration after having added products, you will have to edit them in order to set the tax properly for each product.

The ecotax will also appear to the customer, on the product's page:

Adding a New Tax

When you want to add another tax; simply click on the "Add New" button seen in the previous screenshot, and this form will appear:

Fill in the name of the tax ("TVA", for example), and its rate (in the XX.XX format), and save.

Note: It is a good idea to add reminders within the name, such as the country/group/zone the tax applies to, and its rate; this can help remembering which tax is to be applied to a given product.

Translations

PrestaShop provides you with full translation tool for your shop. This helps you add and edit the current translations. This way, you are the master of your shop, and can handle your translated strings without having to wait for translators to publish their corrections.

Even if you do not want to correct the translators' work, you might want to change the wording they chose to use (less formal, less wordy, etc.), and customize the various available text, thus tailoring your website to your audience (for instance, a hip-hop clothing shop might be better off using expressions different from that of a luxury watches shop).

"Translation exchange" section

The "Translation" sub-tab provides a few tools for your translation needs.

Add / Update a language

Many languages are available for you to download and install, directly from the PrestaShop servers. Your PrestaShop install will take care of downloading the language pack, unpacking it and create the correct sub-folder in your installation's /translation folder.

You can also update the currently installed languages, likewise directly from the PrestaShop servers. But be reminded that any change that you might have made to a language pack will be lost if you update it.

Import a language pack manually

In the case where you do not want to use an official PrestaShop translation pack, but rather a custom one (either provided by someone you know, or one that you exported from another PrestaShop install), then this form is for you. Select the Zip file, click the "Import" button, and it will install the pack in the /translation+ folder. Warning: if there already exists a language folder with the same ISO 639-1 code, it will be replaced by the files from the archive you are importing.

Export a language

Either as a way of making a backup of your customizations, or of sharing them with other PrestaShop installs, you can create your own language pack using this form.

Note that the pack will contain the theme that your translation is supposed to support.

Copy

You can copy the content of one language to another. This is especially useful when you wish to replace a theme language with the same language from another theme.

Modifying a Translation

The most important tool of the "Translation" sub-tab is in the "Modify translations" section. This is where you can choose to edit a translation, and completely customize each and every sentence if you wish.

Select the part of the current translation that you wish to edit:

• Front Office translations. Text visible to your customers about your shop.
• Back Office translations. The texts accessible from your store's administration panel
• Error message translations. The error message translations that may appear.
• Fields Names translations. The name of the fields in the front office or back office.
• Module translations. The terms used by the installed and activated modules.
• PDF translations. The terms used in the generated PDF files.
• E-mail template Translations. The terms used in default e-mail templates.
  Once done, click the flag of the language that you wish to edit that translation in.

A long form then appears. It contains, split in tens of section, the hundreds of available strings.

Click on a section title to open or close it, edit at will, and click on the "Update Translation" button at the top of the page when you are done.

At the right of each text field is an icon:

• Hover the mouse cursor over it to display the Google Translate suggestion.
• Click it to apply the suggestion.