Table of content

First steps with PrestaShop 1.5

Now that you have installed PrestaShop and that your are properly logged-in to your administration area, take the time to survey the Dashboard – that is, the first page you see when logging into your back-office.

Not only does it present you with a summary of everything you need to know about your shop at any given time, along with quick links to the main action page, but as a first-timer in PrestaShop, it also gives you tips about what you should have a look at.

Overview of the interface

The Top Bar

At the top of the back-office is a black containing a handful of links:

The tabs

All along your daily activities administrating your shop, you will have to browser through the many pages and options of the back-office. Each tab applies to a given set of tasks:

These are the default tabs. Note that modules can add new tabs, add new pages to the existing tabs, and even new options to the existing pages.

Also, a new tab can be made available through the Preferences/Products tab: activating the "Enable advanced stock management" option (in the "Products stock" section) gives you access to a whole new feature of PrestaShop 1.5, where you can handle warehouses, stock movement and supply orders. Once activated, the new "Stock" tab appears on the right of the tab-bar, and you can use it as easily as the other standard tabs.

Each of the default standard tabs (along with the "Stock" tab) are explained in depth in this user guide.

The Dashboard

Let's now explore the content of the Dashboard itself. It can feel crowded to first-time user, but you will find it gives an excellent summary your shop's daily at a glance.

The left column

The first element on the left is the introduction video and text. As a first-comer, we strongly advise you to watch the video, as it will serve as a quick visual guide to necessary steps to go through before opening your shop. We'll go into more details in the "Preparing your shop" section below. Once you have viewed the video, you can free some Dashboard real-estate by ticking the "Do not show again" checkbox.

Below the introductory video and text are a handful of quick links, which lead some of the most useful pages at this stage of your exploration of PrestaShop. These buttons should help you get going with your daily task quicker, as they are some of the most accessed features of PrestaShop.
Two partners banners close the section.

The left column ends with 4 boxes, two giving you information, the other two being links to external content.
The most interesting box at this stage is the "Configuration checklist" box, which displays seven key settings that should be taken care of for a healthy shop, written in color which indicates their status: green for "OK", yellow/orange for "advices", red for "must be done". We will explore this box in details in the "Preparing your shop" section below.
The "PrestaShop Links" box gives you useful links to this very user guide (online edition), its paper edition and the documentation site itself, along with links to the community forums and the Addons website, where you will be able to buy and sell modules and themes.
The "PrestaShop News" box gives you the latest news about PrestaShop, from the official blog.
Finally, a box is dedicated to a message from our partners.

The right column

The right column is where the term "dashboard" takes its importance: this side of the Dashboard presents the user with the most important numbers pertaining to his shop's daily activities, along with a graph of sales and a list of the latest orders. Every time you log into your shop's administration area, you will be first and foremost looking at the evolution these numbers take. This is where you see your shop live and breathe.

Preparing your shop

You are now getting a pretty good idea of how complete PrestaShop can be, and the number of possibilities can feel overwhelming. This first guide will therefore lead you through some basic actions to set up your shop before the big launch. A lot can be done before you launch your shop, but these steps are the essential configuration steps of any shop.

Deactivate your shop

We'll consider that you are still within the first hour following your installation of PrestaShop, in a single-shop instance.

Deactivating your shop means making sure that no one can access it while you are busy making changes, creating products, settings prices and taxes, installing payment modules and a new theme, setting carriers... This is called putting your shop in maintenance mode.

In your back-office, go the "Preferences / Maintenance" page. This page features two simple options:

If you are already decided on your theme and products, you can simply put your shop in Catalog mode. This means that customers can browse your shop, but no price will be displayed, and they won't be able to add anything to their cart until you disable the Catalog mode.

You can activate the Catalog mode by going to the "Preferences / Products" page, where it is the first option.

Delete the content of the shop

The default installation features a handful of products – mainly Apple products, along with a couple third-party accessories. Their only use is to help you explore the set up of a functional store. After you've learned the intricacies of the ties between products, categories, orders and customers, you should delete all these items in order to start your shop with a clean slate.

You must therefore delete all the default data, which means:

The means browsing through the many various screens of the back-office and deleting content one page after the other.

The iPod Touch from the default installation is tied to the sample order (made by sample customer John Doe), and thus cannot be deleted until the order is.

To delete it, you first need to delete this sample order.

While deleting all this data takes only a handful of minutes, you might prefer to not have to do it at all. In this case, you can install your shop again and chose not to install the sample data during the installation process: simply relaunch the installer, and in the "Shop Configuration" screen, choose "No" for the "Install demo products" option. ONLY DO THIS IF YOU HAVEN'T CUSTOMIZED ANYTHING YET.

Note that you will also lose some useful content, such as default contacts and administration profiles, which you will have to recreate by yourself.

Configure your shop's information

Now that you have a clean shop, you can start making it your own, and that implies setting everything up to your likings, starting with your personal information and your preferences.

Shop basic settings

You should pay attention to the following settings, most of which are important because they are displayed on the front-office.

Configuring a module is easy:

  • Go to the "Modules" menu.
  • Type the name of the module (or part of it) in the module search box. It should display results as you type.
  • When the module is found, click the "Configure" button, and follow the instructions.

Setting

Description

Menu / option

Shop name

Defines your brand, most notably on Google.

"Shops" menu, "Shops" option, then click the shop name.

Shop logo

Defines your brand, visually and on your invoices.

"Preferences" menu, "Themes" option, "Appearance" section, then change the various default images to your logo.

Customer service info

Displayed in the front-office, right column.

"Block contact" module.

Contact info

Displayed in the front-office, footer.

"Block contact infos" module.

Advertising

Image displayed in front-end

"Block advertising" module.

Image slider

A slider usually placed front and center of the homepage, and therefore a visual signature for your shop and products.

"Image slider for your homepage" module.

CMS pages

The content of static pages, such as "About Us", "Delivery", "Legal Notice", "Terms and Conditions", and "Secure Payment". Some of them have default content, which you should update; some others are empty, and you should paste your own text.

"Preferences" menu, "CMS" options, then edit each page at will.

These are the most visible default settings on your front-end.

Employees information

Should you have people helping you with your shop, be they your spouse, friends or paid employees, you should make sure to create an employee account for each of them, if only to know who is responsible for which action. The other advantage is that you can give them specific profiles and specific access rights to the administration pages: for instance, you might not want everyone to have access to your statistics, your invoices or your payment settings.

To create a new employee profile, go to the "Employees" menu, select "Profiles", and click the "Add new" button. Fill in a name, such as "Shipping handler", and save.
Now that you have a proper account, you should give it specific permissions, tailored to the profile's activity. A profile can be used for as many employees as needed.

To assign permissions to an employee profile, go to the "Employees" menu, select "Permissions", and select the profile you just created. A long list of permissions appear. By default, a new profile cannot do much. It is up to you to set exactly the parts of your shop which that employee profile should have access to. It can be a tedious task, but it is an important.

To create an employee account, go to the "Employees" menu, select "Employees", and click the "Add new" button. Fill in the details, and do not forget to select the employee profile at the bottom. Once done, click the "Save" button.

Payment configuration

Carrier configuration

Managing orders

Theme choice

Modules choice

Activate your shop

Create a category

This is described in details in the next chapter, "Adding Products and Product Categories".

Create a product

This is described in details in the next chapter, "Adding Products and Product Categories".

Build your top menu ("Top horizontal menu" module)