How to Install a Prestashop Store on a Gandi Web Hosting

This tutorial will show you how to install PrestaShop on a Web Hosting web hosting.

What is PrestaShop?

PrestaShop is a web application that allows you to create a fully functional online store. It is one of the most commonly used applications for e-commerce sites.

PrestaShop is open source and free to access. Its continuing development is supported by a large, active community of developers.

Prerequisites

In order to install PrestaShop you will need:

  • A Web Hosting using PHP and MySQL. We recommend using a size L web hosting or larger.

  • A domain name where you will host your web hosting. This tutorial is specifically aimed at users who have purchased their domain name through Gandi. Don’t have a domain name for your online store? You can buy one from us.

  • Software for transferring files over sFTP, such as FileZilla. Learn more about transferring files over sFTP.

Create a site on your Web Hosting

The first step is creating a site on your web hosting. Do this by going to your Web Hosting interface.

Next, click on the name of the web hosting you want to use to deploy your PrestaShop site. Check to make sure that you have a recent version of PHP installed, at least PHP 7.1.

Click on the “Sites” tab, then click “Create a site.”

Enter the name of the site you want to create. This step is important since this is the name your customers will use to find your shop. For example, you may want to use something like “shop.example.com.”

Warning

Make sure your domain is spelled correctly, since a typo can make your site inaccessible.

After you type in your name our system will validate that you have the right to use the domain name. This should only take a few seconds.

After your domain has been validated click “Activate” to activate your site.

You can then confirm your site is available by going to the address you used above, such as shop.example.com. You should see a page displaying the text “It works…”

Create a Database for PrestaShop

Next, you will create a database on your web hosting for your PrestaShop.

To do this, go to the “Administration & Security“ tab for your web hosting. Find the “Database” section on this page.

Click on “Go to Control panel” to manage your databases.

When you open phpMyAdmin you will be prompted for the web hosting username and password in a dialog box. These are explained below:

  • The web hosting username. This is a 7 digit number that was automatically generated when you created your web hosting. You can find it at the “Control Panel” section of the “Administration & Security“ tab in the Gandi interface for your page, the same page where you found the link to phpMyAdmin.

  • The web hosting password. You provided this password when your web hosting was created. If you don’t remember the password you can change it at the “Control Panel” section of the “Administration & Security“ tab in the Gandi interface for your page, the same page where you found the link to phpMyAdmin.

When you reach the phpMyAdmin you will log in using your database username and password. This is different than the username and password for your web hosting. By default most of the time the username will be “root” and the password will be empty.

You can find the username and password for phpMyAdmin in the “Database” section of the “Administration & Security“ tab in the Gandi interface page for your web hosting. This is the same section and page you found the link for phpMyAdmin.

Once you have logged into phpMyAdmin click on “Databases.” At the top of the page is a box for creating databases. Give your prestashop database a name, such as “prestashop_db”, then click “Create.” Remember the name of the database you used, since you will need it when you set up your PrestaShop.

Download PrestaShop

Go to the PrestaShop download site and download the latest version of PrestaShop. Choose to save it to your computer, then unzip the archive. The resulting folder should have three files:

  • index.php

  • install_prestashop.html

  • prestashop.zip

Send PrestaShop Files to Web Hosting

You will next send files to the site you just created. You can do this using Filezilla. You can find help with using Filezilla with your web hosting in our Filezilla tutorial.

Once you are connected go to the directory vhosts/shop.example.com/htdocs, replacing shop.example.com with your shop site address.

In this directory, delete index.html and then copy the three above files to this location.

Follow the Installation Instructions

Go to your shop site in a browser by typing your address (such as shop.example.com) into the address bar. When the page loads you should see the prestashop installation interface. Follow the steps provided.

When configuring your database use the values you created above, including the name of the database and the username and password for your database. Remember that your database password is different from your web hosting password, and by default most of the time your username will be root and your password will be empty. Set the address as “Localhost.”

Delete the Installation File

For security reasons, once your installation is completed you will need to delete the install directory from your site before you can access the administration interface. You can do this using Filezilla. Find the /install directory in vhosts and delete it.

Add an SSL Certificate

For any website, especially an online store, it is important to secure the connections with an SSL certificate. You can generate one for free through your Gandi interface.

Set Up Web Forwarding

You can point multiple website addresses to your online store using web forwards. For example, you might have a dedicated domain such as www.exampleshop.com, as well as the subdomain of your main site such as shop.example.com. You can learn more about how to set up these directs for domains you have purchased through Gandi on our web forwarding page.