PrestaShop is an e-commerce solution which is free for the basic kernel and open source

Open source

The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

. It supports payment gateways such as Google Checkout

Google Checkout

Google Checkout is an online payment processing service provided by Google aimed at simplifying the process of paying for online purchases. Users store their credit or debit card and shipping information in their Google Account, so that they can purchase at participating stores by clicking an...

, PayPal

PayPal

PayPal is an American-based global e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. Online money transfers serve as electronic alternatives to paying with traditional paper methods, such as checks and money orders....

 and Payments Pro via API. Further payment modules are offered commercially.

PrestaShop is available under the Open Software License

Open Software License

The Open Software License is a software license created by Lawrence Rosen. The Open Source Initiative has certified it as an open source license, but the Debian project judged version 1.1 to be incompatible with the DFSG...

 and officially launched in August 2007 for small to medium-sized businesses. The software, which is based on the Smarty

Smarty

Smarty is a web template system written in PHP. Smarty is primarily promoted as a tool for separation of concerns.Smarty is intended to simplify compartmentalization, allowing the presentation of a web page to change separately from the back-end...

 template engine, is currently used by 100,000 shops worldwide . PrestaShop was named the Best Open Source E-Commerce Application in the Packt

Packt

Packt, pronounced Packed, is a print on demand publishing company based in Birmingham, UK.-Company:Packt published its first book, Mastering phpMyAdmin for Effective MySQL Management, in April 2004, and continues to specialize in publishing focused books on specific technologies and solutions...

 2010 Open Source Awards and the Best Open Source Business Application in the 2011 Open Source Awards.

The PrestaShop group was founded in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, with a second office recently opened in Miami. Over 40 languages are available to varying degrees, with only English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 and French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 having full support in all release versions. Technical support is provided on the official forum.

The software makes extensive use of AJAX

Ajax (programming)

Ajax is a group of interrelated web development methods used on the client-side to create asynchronous web applications...

 in the admin panel, while module blocks can be easily added to the store to provide extra functionality; these are normally provided free of charge by independent developers. The makers of PrestaShop have an official marketplace for priced modules and themes entitled PrestaShop Addons.

Since PrestaShop is widely accepted Shopping cart software there are number of volunteers who supports and contributes Addons. Recently Mob eCommerce has released Mobile app for Prestashop. Now PrestaShop users can give mobile app for their customers which will increase the sales.

Technical requirements

The merchant

Merchant

A merchant is a businessperson who trades in commodities that were produced by others, in order to earn a profit.Merchants can be one of two types:# A wholesale merchant operates in the chain between producer and retail merchant...

 must have a domain name

Domain name

A domain name is an identification string that defines a realm of administrative autonomy, authority, or control in the Internet. Domain names are formed by the rules and procedures of the Domain Name System ....

 and a web server

Web server

Web server can refer to either the hardware or the software that helps to deliver content that can be accessed through the Internet....

 which these features:

• Apache web server
  Apache HTTP Server
  The Apache HTTP Server, commonly referred to as Apache , is web server software notable for playing a key role in the initial growth of the World Wide Web. In 2009 it became the first web server software to surpass the 100 million website milestone...
  
   1.3 or later
• PHP
  PHP
  PHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document...
  
   5 or later
• MySQL
  MySQL
  MySQL officially, but also commonly "My Sequel") is a relational database management system that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. It is named after developer Michael Widenius' daughter, My...
  
   5 or later
• Linux, Unix or Windows installed operating system
  Operating system
  An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
  
  

(*) Incompatibility issues with the following PHP 5 versions prevent PrestaShop from working correctly:

• PHP 5.2.1 (authentication is impossible)
• PHP 5.2.6 (authentication is impossible under 64bit servers)
• PHP 5.2.9 (image management/upload broken)
• PHP < 5.2 (invalid date timezone)

General feature list

Front Office:

• Special deals (price reductions, gift vouchers)
• Featured products on homepage
• Top sellers on homepage
• New items on homepage
• 'Free shipping' offers
• Cross-selling (Accessories)
• Product image zoom
• Order out-of-stock items
• Customer subscription & user accounts
• Unlimited payment methods
• Payment by bank wire
• Google Checkout module
• Cash-On-Delivery (COD)
• Preconfigured for Paypal
• Multiple-recipient contact form
• Product tagging & tag cloud
• Search
• Merchandise return (RMAs) & credit slips
• Package tracking
• Offer gift-wrapping & recycled packaging
• PDF customer invoice
• Shopping Cart recall
• Sale of services & virtual goods
• Custom Favicon
• RSS feed
• Newsletter opt-in
• 'Pick up in-store' option
• Customized product (text and images)
• Wishlist
• Loyal customer program
• Affiliate program
• Sponsor-a-friend benefit program
• Customer product reviews

Back Office:

• Unlimited categories & subcategories
• Full-featured WYSIWYG text editor
• Unlimited product attribute combinations
• Unlimited product specs
• Unlimited images with automatic resizing & file optimization
• Unlimited currencies
• Unlimited tax settings
• Unlimited carriers & destinations
• Tax by state, country, both, zones, or no taxes
• Digressive pricing (Quantity discounts)
• Real-time currency exchange rates
• Inventory management
• SMS/Text-message alerts
• Add/delete function modules
• Bar codes
• Contextual help
• Attribute Combo Generator
• Delivery status notification e-mails (customizable)
• Unlimited languages & dialects
• Import/export language translations
• 13 default language translations
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Friendly URLs / Permalinks
• 100% modifiable graphic themes
• Back Office users & permissions (ACL )
• Maintenance Mode
• Minimum order amount
• Newsletter contact export
• Alias search
• Bulk lister/import .CSV files
• SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) encryption
• Visitors online
• Content Management System (CMS)
• Reports
• Customer groups

Languages

PrestaShop is now translated into 41 languages:
Arabic, Azerbaijani, Bulgarian, Catalan, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, Galician, Georgian, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese-Brazilian, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish, Spanish-Argentine, Spanish-Mexican, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese.

Releases

PrestaShop 1.0 was released on July 31, 2008.

PrestaShop 1.1 was released on December 19, 2008.

PrestaShop 1.2 was released on July 29, 2009.

PrestaShop 1.3 was released on December 29, 2010.

PrestaShop 1.4 b5 was released on January 19, 2011 (for tests only).

PrestaShop 1.4 RC5 was released on February 23, 2011 (for tests only).

PrestaShop 1.4 Final was released on March 18, 2011, bringing more than 65 new features to merchants & developers.

PrestaShop 1.4.1 was released on April 21, 2011.

PrestaShop 1.4.2 was released on May 30, 2011.

PrestaShop 1.4.3 was released on June 16, 2011.

PrestaShop 1.4.4 was released on July 28, 2011.

PrestaShop 1.4.5 was released on October 13, 2011.

PrestaShop 1.5.0 was released on July 6, 2011 (for tests only).

External links

• Modules for Prestashop
• Official Prestashop Website
• Russian community Prestashop
• Indonesian Community Prestashop - Komunitas Prestashop Indonesia
• Official Marketplace
• Building a Prestashop Payment Module Tutorial
• free modules for prestashop and paid
• Paid service for PrestaShop migration
• Official Paid Extension - Store Manager for PrestaShop
• PrestaShop Payment Gateway Modules
• Free PrestaShop Modules
• Free Quality Prestashop Modules and Themes
• Professional Prestashop Themes and Prestashop Modules development