Book Image

PrestaShop 1.3 Beginner's Guide

Book Image

PrestaShop 1.3 Beginner's Guide

Overview of this book

PrestaShop is a hidden gem. There are many much more widely known online shopping cart solutions that have nothing like the features, potential, and ease of use that this open source, completely free-to-use, system has. But until now there has been no information available on how to make the most of it. This book takes a step-by-step approach to help you set up your own e-commerce store and maximize its potential. Even if you are totally new to e-commerce and PrestaShop, you can have your own functioning e-commerce store quickly and with tiny expenditure. Imagine the feeling when you get that glorious e-mail saying that you have your first paying customer.This practical guide follows the order of developing an active business. Packed with easy-to-follow steps with loads of screenshots and clear explanations, it follows a step-by-step approach to set up a PrestaShop e-commerce store from the very beginning through finding a web host, setting up your PrestaShop store, accepting money from customers, and planning for the future of your business.The first few chapters are a lightening, but thorough, illustration of how to get your shop online, stocked up, and looking smart and unique, including some really cool and really simple product features to show off your wares in style – very quickly. The later chapters are quite diverse and cover some exciting stuff such as newsletters, loyalty schemes, alternative revenue streams, statistics and analytics. You will also learn about security, disaster recovery, payment handling, currencies, taxes, shipping, and more. Towards the end, the chapters cover final preparations before going live, handling orders in PrestaShop, and how to promote your store and get more customers. Once the money starts to flow, the book looks at the future of e-commerce and your PrestaShop business. Then it discusses how to get to the top of your niche and stay there. And then the big secret: to use the knowledge you have gained to turn a single PrestaShop into a thriving e-commerce empire.The Appendix covers a number of worthwhile topics such as a handy PrestaShop control panel reference and various web resources for PrestaShop.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
PrestaShop 1.3 Beginner's Guide
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgement
About the Reviewers
Preface

Time for action - how to upgrade PrestaShop


Keeping PrestaShop up-to-date will keep us secure against all the known threats. So let's do it.

  1. 1. Make sure you have a full backup of your store, files, and database in case this goes horribly wrong. And it can.

  2. 2. Log into your PrestaShop control panel. If there is an update available, it will be shown near the top of your admin login page. If not, you could revisit this tutorial when there is.

  3. 3. Click on the Download link and save the upgrade. Yours will probably have a different version number to the one in the screenshot.

  4. 4. Extract the download and you will be left with a prestashop folder full of subfolders and files.

  5. 5. Rename your main prestashop folder and leave it on your website. Call it prestashop_old. We do this so that in a few steps time we can easily copy back some files to the new folder. You can perform this step in your web host's control panel or by opening an FTP window, right-clicking, and selecting Rename, and then renaming...