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Whether you are a computer expert or a novice, the PrestaShop™ e-Commerce solution lets you take any business online.

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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, who provides you with an online home for a few dollars per month.

You may also want to buy a domain-name for your shop. Many web host offer a free domain with every new account, but you could also buy one at and an independent domain name registrar.

Whichever hosting service you use must have the following components installed on your server space:

• System: Unix, Linux or Windows. Unix is highly recommended.
• Web server: Apache Web server 1.3 or later.
• PHP 5.2 or later. (You may have to activate PHP 5 on your hosting service, see below.)
• MySQL 5.0 or later.
• At least 32 Mb of RAM on your server (64 Mb is comfy, the more the better).

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Three choices are available to you currently:

• the latest version (1.4.34.0 as of this writing): a stable version, ready for all websites.
• a stable version with a free trial for a PrestaShop add-on (Store Manager).
• (at the bottom of the page) the alpha version (1.5.0 as of this writing): in heavy development, it is only available for testing purposes, NOT for production.
• a stable version with a free trial for a PrestaShop add-on (Store Manager).
• Use at your own risk.

Click on either of the stable versions' "Download PrestaShop" buttons, and save the archive on your computer (such as on the desktop). You should get a file named "prestashop_1.4.34.0.zip" (or an equivalent, depending on the version numbers).

The downloaded file is an archive, containing all of PrestaShop's files in compressed form. In order to continue with the process, you must uncompress the archive. If your operating system does not support Zip files per default, you can download and install a free tool, such as 7-zip.

Extract the content of the archive to a know location of on your hard-drive (such as on the desktop again).

Uploading PrestaShop

You should now have a hosting space at your disposal, and a folder on your hard-drive with the uncompressed PrestaShop archive. This step makes you upload the PrestaShop file files on your hosting space. This is done using a FTP client.

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Once FileZilla is installed, you will need to configure it with your site's log-in parameters, which should have been sent to you by your host. If not, ask for them to your host – or check your spam folder

Basically, the needed parameters are:

• a hostname or an IP address: the location of your hosting space on the Internet.
• a username: your hosting account identifier, which is unique to you.
• a password: obligatory security measure.

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1. Click the "New Site" button. A new entry is created in the site list. Give it a recognizable name.
2. On the right side, in the "General" tab, enter the parameters your host provided you with: host, user, password. You should not have to change the other default parameters, unless told so.
3. Once all the fields are properly filled, click the "Connect" button. This will both save your site in the list, and log you into your account, so that you can make sure everything works right.

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In the "Remote site" section (on the right), browse to the location where you want PrestaShop to be publicly available. This can change a lot, depending on both your host and your needs:

• HostsYour host:
  • Some hosts might may require you to place your files in a specific folder, such as /htdocs, /web, /www, your domain name /yourdomainname.com, etc.
  • Other hosts' FTP server will simply log you directly into the proper upload space.
• Your needs:
  • If you want your shop to be the main website for your domain name (i.e., http://www.myprestashop.com), upload PrestaShop at the root folder of the upload space (which may depend on the host).
  • If you want your shop to be in a sub-folder of your domain name (http://www.mywebsite.com/shop), you must first create said folder through FileZilla (right-click and choose "Create directory"), then upload PrestaShop in that folder.
  • If you want your shop to be in a sub-domain of your domain name (http://shop.mywebsite.com), you must first create said sub-domain. This depends on your host: read its you might be able to do it simply by adding a new folder with your FTP client, or you might have to create the sub-domain through your host's administration panel. Read you're hosts support documentation first. Once created, browse to the sub-domain's folder, and upload PrestaShop there.

You should now have on On FileZilla's left side, you should now have the local folder where you uncompress uncompressed the PrestaShop files, and on the right side, the destination location. From there on, uploading is simple: select all files and folders from the local folder (use Ctrl-A), and either drag & drop them on to the remote folder, or right-click on the selection and choose "Upload" in the context menu.

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Before you can actually install PrestaShop, you need to make sure you your MySQL server has a database ready for PrestaShop's data, and if not, create one. This can be done using the free phpMyAdmin tool, which should come pre-installed on your web server most of the time. Some hosts prefer to have customers use a graphic control panel, such as cPanel, Plesk or a custom-made one. Make sure you read your host's documentation about handling MySQL.If your host does offer phpMyAdmin access, connect to Connect to it using your account credentials, that your host provided you with. It should be accessible through a standard URL, tied to your domain name, or that of your host.

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Either way, you can create a brand new database using the central form named "Create new database". Simply enter a unique name, and click "Create". The name of the database will be added to the list on the left. You can now use it to store PrestaShop's data.

Launching the auto-installer

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1. Select the language in which you wish the installer to be.
2. Select whether you wish to install or update PrestaShop (if this is your first time, you can only install).
3. Read and agree to the PrestaShop license (the Open Software License 3.0), and agree to it.

To access the next step, you must check the "I agree to the above terms and conditions" box, then click "Next". If you do not explicitly agree to the license, you cannot install PrestaShop.

Step 2 & 3: System compatibility & system configuration.

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If anything goes wrong, the installer stop stops you here, enabling you to fix see the few technical details that need fixing, be it changing the PHP configuration or updating the file permissions.

While changing the PHP configuration can only be done on a case-by-case basis depending on your level of access to your server, and therefore cannot be explained here, updating the file permissions is easier to explain. This will require you to access your remote files, and therefore use your FTP client (such as FileZilla).

Log-in to your server account using FileZillayour FTP client, browse to the PrestaShop folder, and find the folder folders that are marked by the installer as in need of a permission change. Changing file/folder permission on a Unix/Linux system is called a "CHMOD", after the command of the same name – you can find an explanation of file permissions here). Giving them "write permission" is called "doing a CHMOD 755" or "a CHMOD 775", depending on the host – although the last one is not recommended for anything more than a one-time need.

In any case, thanks to FileZilla (and most FTP clients), you can change permissions easily and graphically: once you have found a file or folder that needs such a suchchange, right-click on it from your FTP client, and in the context menu choose "File permissions...". It will open a small window.

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For folders that the installer is needing a recursive permission change on, you can check the "Recuse Recurse in subdirectories" box.

Regularly check that you have made the correct check by relaunching the installer's compatibility checks: click "Refresh these settings" as often as necessary.

Once all indicators are green, you can click "Next". If you cannot have them all green, at least make sure the installer allows you to go to the next step.

System configuration

This page contains a form that enables you to tell PrestaShop where the database server is, and which database it should use, along with a few other details.

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Choose the prefix for your tables. "ps_" is the default, resulting in the PrestaShop SQL table having names such as "ps_carcart" or "ps_wishlist", ; but if you need to install more than one instances of PrestaShop on the same database, then you must use a unique prefix for each install.

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• Simple mode: a blank and empty PrestaShop will be installinstalled. It will have no modules, no theme, and no demo products/categories: you will have to build it all yourself. This is great if you know what you are doing.
• Full mode: PrestaShop will be install installed with a theme, more than a hundred modules, and some demo products and categories. This is great for newcomers, as it helps you learn how to use PrestaShop... and can of course server as a good basis for your own store, after removing the demo products and categories!

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This is where you can already start customizing your shop: give it a name and a logo, indicate its main activity, indicate the personal information for the shop owner (which has legal binding in most countries)...

Image Added

Note that the logo will appear:

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You can also choose to use PrestaShop simply as catalog, which will disable all purchase and payment features, even temporarily. This is useful when you are setting your shop up for first time, as it insures that no purchase can be made until you are ready to let people shop on your site. You can remove the catalog mode later, in the "Preferences" > "Products" sub-tab.

The page ends with a couple of "Additional benefits", which are modules that are specially promoted in the installer. You can choose to install them or not.

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Completing the installation

There As you can read about right on the final page of the installation process, there are a couple of last actions to perform before you can call it a success, which you can read about right on the final page of the installation process.

An easy way to improve your installation's security is to delete or rename some key files and folders. Deletion of remote files is done using your FTP client.

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If you have no access to the php.ini file (which is often the case in shared hosting), contact your host about your hosting needs.

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