PrestaShop without limits if you know programming

PrestaShop without limits if you know programming

When you face first to Prestashop, it is like a new toy that only want to dedicate hours to have fun with it. 

The first thing is to perform the installation. Truth, without knowing anything can have a tent installed and ready to play in a few minutes. We have become used to the next button, and in 10 minutes we are ready... There have Ipods and Macs ready to be sold. I have to buy me one! I sign as a client and ready to make a transfer order. Suddenly jump the alarms of the post: has been processed everything and my order has arrived properly; already missing less to have my laptop at home.  But it is not the only email that I receive. Also an order I have received... I quickly enter excited administration and see that someone has purchased in my store, that fast! I have not yet begun and already I am selling: a Mac, almost nothing... thousand EURET ;) What a shame, I have paid by transfer, will I have to wait a few days... While I will take to have it all prepared. First, the product you ordered. I start to find it for my room and not find it... 

My first order and do not have "stock"!

We have already learned an important part of the Prestashop.

The stock is very important if we sell products. Nor do we have customer paste, and fortunately, all this is the beginning of my world in Prestashop and customer I was because if not, would that have caught the motorcycle of the Telepizza friend mine because the carrier had not prepared... 

So my first lesson is clear: I have to see what products will sell, how to repay them customers, and how can I send them. While I look through all of this I have time to be able to continue seeing thoroughly everything that gives us this application called Prestashop.

I first learn to configure a product, a short description here, a long below, its corresponding image, the product name and the price (which is missing) and ready. Very well, and then ¿¡¡to all others what!?

Now, you can do two things: invest a little time to investigate what can be done or simply let the time show it to me. If I choose the option to learn with time, I commit mistakes that we are sure that they will do that some client me again to buy, so that, the first thing is to learn to use the tool with which I am working to fund because it is me going to feed...

Over time, working with Prestashop you passed as when you change your House. At the beginning you see all rooms and all he could do in them, but over time the House stays small because you have kids and you need space. The same thing happens when you start a project: it will always grow and why it is very important that the base is good. So you can not take a 30 m 2 House because more leave it to you cheap, you must think that you are staying to live all the life there... If we want to sell and have no problems the first thing to do is to invest in a good server that load you the pages quickly (making sure your store is best positioned), that your provider can solve a problem at the moment if you lose any information and that you not limit so you can grow.

But there is another thing that with time you learn using Prestashop, and is simply that can't you do it all and you'll deal with many projects that need much more functionality than that offered you series Prestashop. What do I do if someone requires certain functionality just to be able to sell their products because they have special characteristics? can you not do it? I say that with Prestashop you can not? No, I simply learn what pasta is made Prestashop and how I can help our customers.

Now is when really I begin to see what the potential of Prestashop and begin to enter a new world with terms that will become part of my life: the main of all that it encompasses everything in Prestashop, but there are also the "modules" (let you add functionality to the Prestashop), the paradigm of the MVC (Model-View-Controller), override folders files and how no, the tpl created with smarty.   

It is time again to study even more. What has the world of computing, you must always be attentive to the developments to be able to solve the problems according to the existing technology at your disposal. So there is another, first learn what MCV and Prestashop code I check to see how translates this into the platform, the "classes" folder, the "controllers" folder and these tpl facts with smarty I must learn Yes or Yes. Then I ride a small module, reviewing all the documentation for programming that exists of Prestashop and modules; It is a first step to be able to be part of this exciting world and at the same time, frustrating at times, because of the same Prestashop.

Now is when I start to see exactly all the problems that I have to take into account and that ultimately take me many hours of work since they do not allow me to create new features. Prestashop has grown and no longer be a simple toy to be a powerful tool used by many customers, the Prestashop team has been reorganizing all the existing code to make way for new features multi-shop, stock in warehouses, etc., and this has been causing out new version of Prestashop (according to my point of view not sufficiently proven and that leave customers exposed to all the errors they) same cause) and default that the human being, always wanting the latest causes thousands of errors in the stores and have to reorganize all those modules that you have programmed to be able to adapt them. This is the moment in which you learn one of the main issues of this world... Really I need to update time to the latest version?

The answer is simple:

No

Your current store allows you to sell what you need, or necessarily require new functionality in the latest version? If it is not limiting your sales you don't update, wasting time, withstand problems and spend money to perform this step. Inverts this time and this money into modules that add functionality that really you require.

As my colleague Alberto said, to be an expert you should have spent more than 10,000 hours in this world, but I would add some more points:

• 1) you must have fought with many clients to really know what problems are and what their needs are and what you really need. 
• (2) you have to know when an error occurs, what causes it and why, simply to see the footprints which leaves and be a good detective to find those tracks that are not visible and give the error.
• (3) and finally, you can not settle for what Prestashop offers series. You will have to spend much time in front of the screen to improve implementation, develop modules that enhance its functionality and usability, thus adapting it to what is really important: your business needs.

Put a module in your life and you'll have a Prestashop without limits

Author: Jorge Donet. Program Manager