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What you need to get started
Quick list
Here is a quick list of what you need to get started with the installation of PrestaShop 1.5.
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You also need to know which URL on your domain you want your shop(s) to be accessible from
Hosting
Finding a host
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, which provides you with an online home for a monthly or yearly fee.
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| Tip |
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PrestaShop can host your online business on its in-house Web servers; please consult our PrestaBox website for details on our low-priced, secure Website hosting service. This is highly recommended for businesses with little to no experience with the Internet or computers. Naturally, we install and update PrestaShop for you. |
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, most of the time for a yearly fee.
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There are many more. Ask your friends!
Technical requirements
Whichever hosting service you use must have the following components installed on your server space:
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More information is available for system administrators in the System Administrators Guide.
Tools
You will need two tools: a text editor, in order to edit text files, and a FTP client, in order to transfer files from your machine to your server.
Text editor
Here are a few well-known text editors:
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Do NOT use a word processor, such as Microsoft Word or OpenOffice.org Write when editing text files. |
FTP client
FTP is short for "File Transfer Protocol", meaning the standard way used to transfer files from a computer to a web-host.
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- Windows
- Filezilla: http://filezilla-project.org/
- WinSCP: http://winscp.net/
- SmartFTP: http://www.smartftp.com/
- OS X
- Cyberduck: http://cyberduck.ch/
- Transmit: http://www.panic.com/transmit/
- Fetch: http://fetchsoftworks.com/fetch/
- Unix/Linux
- gFTP: http://gftp.seul.org/
- cURL: http://curl.haxx.se/
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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Note that thanks to the multishop feature, you can have as many shops as necessary with a single installation of PrestaShop 1.5, each with its own specific URL. Take that into account when deciding what goes where.
Whatever your plan, the default shop will always reside where PrestaShop itself is located.
Setting up a local environment
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.
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