PrestaShop multistore, step-by-step to install
One of the extraordinary features of PrestaShop is the capacity to create and manage multiple stores within a single installation of the software. Clearly, from an admin side, it’s much easier to update one instance of the core software and any modules you’re using rather than having to backup, upgrade and trying to keep them all aligned with each other in terms of data and file versions.
Should you enable the multistore functionality in PrestaShop? It depends entirely on your business model, but in this article, I’ve listed below some of the main reasons why PrestaShop multistore is a recommended feature for every shop owners.
Why you should set up PrestaShop multistore?
You need to run retail and trade stores, selling products at different prices for both trade and retail customers. The trade store can be hidden from search engines and/or customers unless they are logged in, especially when you want to keep your trading price secret.
Your product’s price varies in different countries. If you’re looking for a way to offer your products at different prices depending on country/customer group, you should really be doing it through a multistore setup and not just catalog discounts.
You are having multiple stores with different branding and layouts. PrestaShop multistore enables you to set up and run totally different themes/modules and content depending on which store you are in. Therefore you could have two stores selling entirely different products or having two totally different target audiences all managed within one installation.
You want to launch a discount clearance store alongside a full price store.
I’m going to cover the process for both PrestaShop 1.6 and 1.7 versions in this tutorial, so make sure you choose the version that’s appropriate for you. Since there are a lot of similar options so I’ve used PrestaShop 1.6 for display purposes only.
How to enable multistore mode in PrestaShop
Before being able to create new stores, you need to enable the PrestaShop multistore mode.
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Once you turned on the multistore mode, you can now go ahead and create the actual stores. You can find a new ‘Multistore’ option in the “Advanced Parameters” menu and it’s the same for both PrestaShop 1.6 and 1.7 versions.
PrestaShop multi-store management
The “Multistore” configuration page includes three mains sections:
Multistore tree – Shows a tree layout of your shop groups, their respective shops, and even different URLs associated with a single shop. By default, there is only one shop (located in the “Default” group) – the one you have been using up until now.
Shop groups list – Lists your available shop groups. If you are looking to share your customers, products, orders and so on between any new stores you create, you need to make sure the settings for your shop groups are correct. You can have as many groups as necessary. You can also edit them by clicking on the ‘Edit’ icon on the right.
Multistore options – All the available choices for the existing shops. The ‘Default Shop’ is the store which will serve as the master for all the other shops you built. It is also the one that appears by default when you log in the back office.
Adding a new store to PrestaShop in multistore mode
To add a new store, click on the “Add a new shop” button to the top right of the PrestaShop multistore configuration page.
- Shop name: fill in your new shop name here.
- Shop group: select the shop group you want to link your new shop
- Category root: by default, it will be PrestaShop ‘Home’ category. If you want to use another created category, you can change that here.
- Associated categories: select which categories you want to include/connect with your new shop from the default store.
- Theme: select a theme from the templates already installed that you want to use with your new shop.
- Import Data: you have to choose whether or not to import data from an existing shop, and if you have more than one already, which one you want to use as the source shop to import the data into your new shop.
- Click “Save” button.
And here are the advantages!
With PrestaShop multistore usefulness, you can create new shops that keep running inside a subfolder/subdomain setup or they could be an independent site with a totally separate domain name. For example, you can have these following store URLs running in the same PrestaShop multistore install:
- https://www.example.com (main site)
- https://www.example.com/fashion (shop 2)
- https://www.example.com/food-store (shop 3)
- https://www.example.co.uk (shop 4)
- https://www.anotherexample.com (shop 5)
- https://www.anotherexample.com/furniture (shop 6)
All the shops in the above example can be set up inside the same shop group to use the same products, settings and categories or within separate groups if you want to create separate content within them.
The best thing is you can manage all these stores from the same PrestaShop installation, which means you can perform one PrestaShop theme and module upgrade and all other stores are automatically upgraded too. Marvelous!
Setting up the URL for your PrestaShop multistore
Once the new store is successfully created, you’ll be taken to the group page of that store. Click on ‘Click here to set a URL for this shop’ link and head to a new page where you can adjust the URL settings for the new shop.
Assuming you have installed PrestaShop inside the “public_html” folder in your hosting account, we’ll explore the next step.
Note: You don’t need to add http:// or https:// to any of the URL’s you might set up because PrestaShop will do that for you, depending on whether or not you’re using SSL on your PrestaShop site.
Subfolder
If your new store is simply running in a subfolder on your current domain name, leave all settings as default except for the Virtual URL. You will need to add the name of the folder you want to use here, remembering to include the forward slashes.
For example, to use example.com/fashion/ as your URL simply put /fashion/ in the Virtual URL field and click “Save”.
Subdomain
If you want to use a subdomain for your new store, change the Domain and SSL Domain into your subdomain URL and leave all other settings the same.
Note: Make sure you’ve set up a subdomain alias inside your hosting admin area for this to work.
New domain
To use a different top-level domain with your new PrestaShop multistore shop, you’ll need to make sure you’ve placed the domain correctly on your hosting admin area and configured the domain’s DNS to point to your hosting account.
Edit both the Domain and SSL domain fields and enter your domain name. If you’re using “www.” at the beginning of your URL, don’t forget to add it in these fields too.
Multistore is a very useful feature in PrestaShop, it allows you to create an unlimited number of different stores or websites within a single PrestaShop installation. Hopefully, this tutorial helped you understand the process of enabling and setting up PrestaShop multi-store in versions 1.6 and 1.7. If you have any question, please let me know via the comment section below.
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