5 Quick tips for a hassle free PrestaShop store?

5 Quick tips for a hassle Free PrestaShop Store?

PrestaShop is a promising eCommerce platform that has been a favorite among numerous eCommerce store owners around the world with its huge bundle of features and functionalities. No doubt, the multiple features are added in PrestaShop to improve the functionality of your online store but if these features are not handled responsibly, it can also become the bone of contention in the business growth of your PrestaShop store.

We are providing you a list of certain functionalities that needs to be configured properly during the development and production mode of a PrestaShop store. It needs to be remembered that any modification in these features during the working of your PrestaShop website can even degrade the performance of the site. These features also need to be considered by numerous PrestaShop development company while designing an effective PrestaShop store. Take a look at some of these features as mentioned below: 1. Compilation of Smarty template files-

It is one of the crucial features that needs to be taken care of while developing the template of a PrestaShop store. PrestaShop development service provider company need to ensure that the Smarty template files are recompiled for each call in order to be sure that the changes are effectively implemented or not. In order to accomplish this task, you need to select the “Recompile templates if the files have been updated” or use the “Force compilation option.

However, these options are not meant to be used on a live PrestaShop store and need to be performed during the development stage only. This is due to the fact that compilation of Smarty files takes a long time and there is no requirement for checking the modification date of the file every time during the compilation process.

To be on the safer side, it is better to use “Never recompile template files” for your live PrestaShop site.

2. Smarty Cache- We all know that the use of Smarty Cache helps in saving the server resources and improves the store performance. However, there is a downside associated with it. Once, the cache system is activated, it simply makes use of already generated HTML block for the first call and displays it immediately without retrieving large amounts of data from the database and thus avoids processing them one by one for each call.

Furthermore, this option needs to be disabled if you are making certain changes in your PrestaShop templates for ensuring a quick reflection of the changes at the front end. Remember that in the production mode, it is recommended to turn “ON” this

option for optimizing the performance of a PrestaShop store.

3. Debug console- This PrestaShop store plays a key role for certain developers because it displays the data assigned to the Front office if it is enabled. You need to disable this option and it is one critical feature that is recommended by numerous PrestaShop development company as it consists of crucial private information related to the store catalog.

To ensure the safety of catalog information, the use of this console option should be disabled by selecting the option “Do not open console” which is the default option for the PrestaShop store.

To make changes in this option, site owners using the PrestaShop 1.4 version need to apply modifications in the required file by following this path /config/smarty.config.inc.php and then replacing the below statement around the 40th line. $smarty->debugging_ctrl = ‘URL’; /* ‘NONE’ on production */ by $smarty->debugging_ctrl = ‘NONE’; /* ‘NONE’ on production */ By making these small changes, site owners can make required configuration in the PrestaShop 1.4 version which displays the debug console with a URL parameter by default.

4. Developer mode- The PrestaShop platform consists of a Developer mode option which offers error display and debugging information regarding the errors that are found on the Front Office. The importance of this debugging tool can’t be underestimated at all for a developer but its use should be avoided for any live store. This is because no store owner would like to display errors for its customers as it may affect the customer engagement.

It is recommended to turn off this debug option while creating a new release of PrestaShop ZIP file. To make any direct modification in the configuration file /config/defines.inc.php to toggle the option, you need to search for the line shown below define(‘_PS_MODE_DEV_’, false); In the above line, false refers that the developer mode is disabled. However, if you want to use this option, you need to enable it during the development store only by changing the line below.

define(‘_PS_MODE_DEV_’, true); 5. Profiling mode- Same as the developer mode, PrestaShop do provide a profiling mode that can help in optimizing the performance of a PrestaShop store. You can enable the profiling mode on your PrestaShop store to get important technical information in the footer. You need to remember that this critical option should not be used during the production mode.

This developer mode option is disabled by default in PrestaShop platform and is present in /config/defines.inc.php file where you need to search for the given line define(‘_PS_DEBUG_PROFILING_’, false); Here, in the above line, false means that the profiling mode is disabled. If you want to enable this option which needs to be done in the case of development mode, you need to use the statement. define(‘_PS_DEBUG_PROFILING_’, true); You need to check the configuration of this option against the following table. For getting more information about the configuration settings of PrestaShop for development and production phase, you can check out the system administrator guide on our official documentation website.

In case, you are thinking about the development and optimization of a PrestaShop store, you can take the help of Velocity, a PrestaShop development company for its diverse range of PrestaShop services. For more detailed information, check out the website at www.velsof.com.