Whether you are a computer expert or novice, the PrestaShop™ e-Commerce solution lets you take any business online.
Because PrestaShop is accessed via any standard Web browser, you can manage it from any computer in the world that has Internet access. Update your homepage, add new products, check on order status---all you need is your PrestaShop username and password.
This Getting Started guide will show you how to:
Before downloading or installing anything, you need to provide a home for your PrestaShop online store. This means it needs 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.
PrestaShop can host your online business on its in-house Web servers; please consult our corporate Website for details on our low-priced, secure Website hosting service. This is highly recommended for businesses with little or no experience with the Internet or computers. Naturally, we install PrestaShop for you.
Whichever hosting service you use must have the following components installed on your server space:
Please note that PrestaShop can work with PHP 5.1 or later, but that versions inferior to 5.2 have bugs that might prevent some functionalities to work well (such as invalid date timezone).
Also, PrestaShop can also work IIS Web server 6.0 or later, and nginx 1.0 or later.
Now that you have made sure that the necessary components are installed on your hosting server, there are a few things to check before installing the PrestaShop e-Commerce software.
Congratulations! Installation is now complete.
Log in to the PrestaShop back-office and start filling out your product catalog and configuring the many settings to suit your tastes and needs.
Note: Regularly back up your database, ideally on different computers, in case of problems related to hardware or security.
After you have completed setting up your shop to get it just the way you want it, but before officially opening it to the buying public, we strongly recommend that you install a local test version on your personal computer (using WAMP for Windows, MAMP for Mac, or LAMP) for Linux), or elsewhere on your hosting server.
This second version will be useful as a pre-production environment in which you can carry out all future changes to your PrestaShop online store without affecting the live version. This way, if an error should occur, your live store remains unchanged.
Note: This method is for modifying PrestaShop application files only. Do not use a test version of the SQL database.
After you have confirmed that your test version works as it should, copy the test version over the live version. (It is best to do this after peak usage hours, and with your store properly and temporarily disabled from within the PrestaShop back-office.)
Done well, the whole update process described within these steps should not take more than half an hour. Do not try to skip a step in order to be done with it faster, as they all are crucial.
Our support team is at your disposition for all technical problems related to the upgrade of your PrestaShop store.
This step consists of backing up your database and your files. This step is not avoidable for success and should never ever be ignored or skipped. Do not proceed to step two without completing this step.
You must save all of the files related to your PrestaShop store.
There are two main ways of backing up your files:
Go to your store’s back-office, click on the “Preference” tab, then select “No” for the “Enable Shop” option.
In the “Maintenance IP” field, located just below the “Enable Shop” one, enter your own IP address, so that you can keep on using your store during the update. This will allow you to test the store, while still making sure visitors cannot access the website.
In order to find out your IP address, visit this page: http://www.myip.dk/
You must absolutely back up the whole database in conjunction to your PrestaShop store.
There are three different ways to back up your database:
If you did not add any personalized translation at the root of your modules, please proceed to step 2.
Navigate to the “Tools” tab, then the “Translations” sub-tab of your back-office.
In the section “Export a Language” select the language to which you have made any modifications, then select your current theme, and click “Export”.
Save the downloaded file into a backup folder of your choice, on your local computer…
Verify your Backup folder, does it contain…
You have checked the entire backup above, and made sure that they are all correct and that you would be able to return to your current version / restore all of your data.
If you answered yes to all of the questions above, then proceed to Step 2.
This step consists of preparing the files that you will need to copy into the new version of PrestaShop.
Visit http://www.prestashop.com and download the latest version of PrestaShop (click the “Download” button on the homepage). You now should have a file: prestashop_1.x.x.zip (where “x” represents the version number).
Unzip the file to your computer. If you do not yet have an unzipping tool, you can download a free one here: http://www.7-zip.org/ .
Once unzipped, open the “prestashop” folder that it contained.
In that “prestashop” folder, select the “admin” folder and rename it to something unique to you (for instance, “admin436”. Your online store currently also has a unique “admin” folder, from its original installation; you can use that unique name if you wish. If you do not know the unique name of your online store’s “admin” folder, use whichever name you want.
Some of the folders that you have backed up will need to be copied to your "prestashop" folder.
The following folders must be copied from your backup towards the recently unzipped “prestashop” folder:
The “prestashop” folder that you have unzipped, now contains all the modifications from your “Backup” folder (and therefore, from your currently live store). This next step will have you upload that folder on your FTP server.
If you renamed the “prestashop” folder, do not forget to update the config/settings.inc.php file accordingly, as explained in step 2-B.
Using your FTP client, upload the “prestashop” folder to your server.
Let’s say your store is at the following URL: http://www.myshop.com
...was replaced by...define('_PS_BASE_URI_', '/prestashop/');
Did you follow these 5 steps?
If you answered yes to all of the questions above, then proceed to Step 3.
This step consists of starting the upgrade script which will upgrade your database.
Visit the following URL: http://www.myshop.com/prestashop/install
(Replace "myshop.com" with the actual URL of your store, and “prestashop” with the name of the folder that you have just transferred to your FTP)
If you did follow the first step of this guide concerning back-ups, you can click “I certify that I backed up my database and application files. I assume all responsibility for any data loss or damage related to this upgrade.” If you did not do the required back-ups or if you did not have a chance to verify the data’s integrity and that these backups are functional and recent, please go back to step 1 of this guide.
The parameters of your hosting provider should show on the screen, as well as more details about the operation about to be launched.
If any of these two parameters does not meet the requirements, you are taking the risk of receiving an error message or a blank page after clicking the “Next”.
Otherwise, click the “Next” button at the bottom of the page.
If sufficient rights are assigned to your files and folders, a page displaying that all is well is shown.
If not, make sure that the folders are properly configured: change their permissions of the folders in red on your FTP server (CHMOD 777 or 775, depending on your hosting provider) then click the “Refresh these settings” button.
In order to perform a CHMOD, using your FTP client, find the folders that have the wrong permission settings, right-click on each of them in order to display their properties (or even better, their access rights), and tick the boxes that are not yet ticked, until a refresh of the “System and Permissions” page gives you only green folder.
Once you’re done, click “Next” at the bottom of the page, the update will start and probably last a few minutes.
Once the update is finished, you should see the a screen saying "Your update is completed!"
On your FTP server, inside the “prestashop” folder, you should delete:
You can now access your store’s front-office at http://www.myshop.com/prestashop (change the URL accordingly).
Did you fellow these 3 steps?
If you answered yes to all of these questions, proceed to step 4.
This step consists of doing various checks to make sure that the store has been properly updated to the latest version.
If you did export your own translations during step 1 (Backups), import them back into your new store by going to the “Tools” tab, then the “Translations” sub-tab.
You should verify that the domain name assigned in the database is indeed the one that you are working with. To do so, visit the “Preferences” tab, then the “SEO & URLs” sub-tab.
You must check the following information:
You can verify your theme’s compatibility with the updated version by visiting the “theme validator” developed by Prestashop.
This tools is available at the following address: http://validator.prestashop.com/
If you use an unmodified copy of the default theme of PrestaShop, this step is not necessary.
To make sure that everything is working properly on your updated store, you should perform a few tests:
Testing To-Do List (this is not a complete list, you should do as much testing as possible):
If every test is successful, congratulations! Proceed to step 5.
This step will accompany you in going live with the latest update.
Congratulations, you have achieved all the essential steps to update your store!
You now need to swap your updated store with your production store.
You have two options to do so:
At the end of the operation, edit the file config/settings.inc.php: look for the line containing _PS_BASE_URI_, and replace “/prestashop/” by “/”. If you don’t do that, your images and theme will not appear correctly.
> For more information, look at the end of the Paragraph D.4 step 2.
Visit the “Preference” tab in the back-office of your production store and click “Yes” for the option “Enable Shop”.
You're done! Enjoy your update shop!
In some rare cases, some modules are not compatible with new version of PrestaShop. You should contact the company / person that provided you with this module to request a few code changes to bring it up to date.
If your update went bad and you do not see any other fix than to roll back to the previous version of your database, there are two mains way of doing so: