PrestaShop

At present, make and devise a website is more simple than a few years ago, besides being quite cheap and fast . This has been due to advances in the field of technology and the birth of content managers or CMS as it is also known. One of these is the CMS PrestaShop a manager quite dynamic that can help develop a product from scratch using a software that is 100% free.

PrestaShop features

Among the main features that can be found in PrestaShop are the following:

• It is a type of software that is used to be able to design websites without having to program.
• It includes a shopping cart and its own sections that a store must have in order to sell products on the internet.
• It has a payment and customer service system .
• It also has a shipping management section .
• It has an open code and also free.
• It has a series of social buttons in order to encourage interaction.
• Its URLs are friendly which makes search engine optimization like Google easier.
• It allows the integration of Google Analytics.

Source

PrestaShop was born in 2007 and its founders were Igor Schlumberger and Bruno Lévêque and the idea of ​​both was to create a common will in order to make electronic commerce more accessible.

PrestaShop Evolution

As we mentioned, it has its origin in 2007 in Spain . In 2008 , the company managed to be launched under the name of PrestaShop 1.0 and just a month later, they already had the record of more than 1000 downloads. In 2009 , on May 7 , version 1.1 was released but it also included the add-ons and the Community Barcamp , a type of community market that also had the best modules for the community.

In July of the same year, the PrestaShop 1.2 version was launched . As of December, the company is credited with seventh place worldwide. By then, it had 18,000 online stores and more than 225,562 downloads. In 2010 , PrestaShop 1.3 is launched , on May 25 , this year, it also manages to receive two awards, 1st place for the Packt Publishing Open Source Award within the Electronic Commerce category and the Open-Source Award as “best e-commerce solution”.

In 2011 PrestaShop 1.4 was launched , which included more than 65 new features for merchants. In 2012 , PrestaShop 1.5 was launched , launched on September 13 and in this version, multi-store functionality, improvements in shopping carts and a better ability to manually create orders through a virtual office were included. Additionally, a community website is launched.

In 2014 , a new version was released on March 17, 2014 . This time, it had a front back-office layout , smart tools , and a responsive back office . More than 23,000 downloads were made in just 24 hours. PrestaShop 1.6 was released on November 7, 2016 in which a more powerful PHP framework known as Symfony was included. The last version that was published was 1.7.6.2 which included email templates, Market place modules and other functionalities.

What is it for

PrestaShop is a tool that can be used to create online stores, managing with it a wide variety of products within a catalog . It is effective in being able to visualize the products so that customers have good purchase options . Is an effective means to manage the online stores , all from one place. Also it makes it possible to optimize the search engines so that stores can be positioned correctly on internet .

How does it work

This platform is free software that works through content management or script which is made using PHP .

What can be done in PrestaShop

With PrestaShop it is possible to make online catalogs to be able to sell products to customers. It is also possible to create shopping carts , enter payment methods and make good order and customer management possible . The payment option makes it possible to enjoy more functionalities.

Why use it

PrestaShop is a very useful tool and should be used by companies to be able to correctly manage the contents that are included in electronic commerce . It is a fairly simple means with which you can create and manage an online store and also for free. This tool makes it possible for companies to have a greater reach and with this they can increase their sales and also, the platform has a minimum cost and without product limits .

Installation

In order to install PrestaShop it is necessary to first download it . This process can be carried out manually and for this, you must download the latest version of the CMS, upload the compressed file and then you can use an FTP to upload the files in a compressed way or you can directly upload the file already compressed to later decompress it .

Then a database must be created on the server to be able to link it to the platform. Finally, you must run the installation script , select the language in which you want to work and then insert the data in the database to start placing the products you want to sell.

Plugins

The plugins PrestaShop known by the name of addons and enable these can be implemented a number of features new in order to improve the development of e – commerce. They are a series of programs that can be downloaded and installed to improve the virtual store , to add new payment methods, security measures or aspects related to the products or services offered. Among the most used addons are the following:

• Abandoned cart reminder
• Age verification popup
• SEO images
• PayMe one click payment

Widgets

Widgets are very advanced concepts that were integrated in PrestaShop version 1.7. With them, the developers of the modules have the option to display the content in any place where prompted a module that you do.

Vulnerabilities

Like other services, PrestaShop is not exempt from being attacked or attacked by unwanted malware . To avoid this problem it is important to recognize if the site is in a state of vulnerability. One of the main problems is in the folder called ” vendor ” which is found in the modules and it should be constantly reviewed in search of a folder called ” phpunit ” which should be eliminated .

What web pages use PrestaShop

Some examples of pages that use PrestaShop are the following:

• Archduchesse
• Bolina Sail
• Football

Advantage

Among the main advantages that can be obtained through PrestaShop we find:

• It is a payment page that accepts most shipping and payment options .
• It has an incredible message management which can be personalized for clients.
• It is fully customizable so users can make changes or use different themes for free.
• It is very fast and light to use as it only focuses on the use of the php5 and MySQL 5 protocols.
• It allows the user to exercise total control over the store through the BackOffice , which makes it possible to control all the management of the store.
• It provides the ability to include items of unlimited and also by categories .
• Sales can be made in any type of currency , so you can use the country’s currency and not other international ones such as the dollar. You can even assign taxes, if necessary.
• The product sheets are quite attractive and also allows you to organize the content by categories and by subcategories .

Disadvantages

Its main disadvantages are:

• It does not have technical support from the brand .
• Many of its most important modules need to be paid as well as many of its templates.
• You can present problems to illustrate the HTML in articles that are up to the page.
• Do not allow to be re routing of similar products .
• Sometimes the design can be quite difficult when the client does not have enough knowledge.

Importance

PrestaShop is important because today is one of eCommerce online more large market as it has several years of development and is constantly being improved. It is a service that allows you to have a large number of templates and easy-to-use modules , so it is not necessary to hire a programmer or a designer to shape the store. In addition, it has a good SEO positioning within search engines which will make it easier for people to traffic to the website.