If I had only known - some tips for beginners

[mikewra]

With the usual flurry of IMHO, FWIW, YMMV, etc., I thought that after completing my first PrestaShop that it might be helpful to compile a general list of things that I wish I had known/done at the outset. The store I made was pretty straight forward and based on the default bootstrap theme, which is very accomodating to modification.  What follows, in an unordered list, is what I'd do right at the start of any next PrestaShop project. Others may have had different experiences or had different needs for their projects and I'd encourage them to respond with their lists/opinions as well.

 

In the interests of full disclosure, I have no ties or affiliations with anything below. Code is one of my passions, but not my career (unless you'd like to make me an offer :>) So this is all just offered as my reflections after using PrestaShop.

Buy and install BoZoom PrestaShop Back Office Performance - more than worth it's price for the time, frustration and headdesking it'll save you in the back office.

Buy and install HTML Box Pro - A quite inexpensive module that is very powerful, flexible and gives you pre-installed, laser-precise ability to add content to virtually any spot on any page, with the option of adding your own target if it's not already in the list.

You don't necessarily need to add every module update that comes along.  Sometimes, they work less well than what they replace given your version and customizations. For example, I had a time-consuming issue that's documented in this discussion: Image slider for your homepage v1.4.3 disables ability to change settings in modules.  And you run the risk of having your customizations over-written (though I have seen, but not used, Nemo's cure: "Prestashop: Upgrade-safe template modifications".)

The forum is your friend and ally.  Do your own due diligence (what fun would it be otherwise) but when in need, post your question here.

While making the site, please, please do not turn on the performance enhancing options in Advanced Parameters -> Performance.  You lose valuable access information when the css files are combined. And I didn't even know that there were helpful comments in the html as I had set Minify Html to Yes.  Thanks and a tip of the hat to El Patron for pointing that out to me.  Worry about these tweaks to page load speed later in the workflow process.

By default, the css, tpl and php are very nicely specified. In turn, very precise modifications to a specific component are possible. You can learn what modules and files are associated with the component by looking at the comments in the unminified html. See this. Had I known that at the beginning, the process would've been oh so much quicker and a lot more enjoyable.

Nemo's Postscriptum video tutorials are thoroughly indispensible. Amazingly, it's free. The first of his tutorials for v1.6 is here.  Really, after downloading the store, figuring out your basic wireframe and pouring a cup of your favorite beverage, this is the only place to start.

When you get to page load speed, if your store is image intensive, you'll want Lazyload - by kik-off.com  to load only the images "above the fold" and save all that load time till the images are needed for display.  This is free and is, from what I can tell, currently unsupported but works with my default bootstrap v1.6.0.9. If you're doubtful of this module for some reason, see https://github.com/tuupola/jquery_lazyload or https://github.com/kaizau/Lazy-Load-Images-without-jQuery and you can make a go of it yourself.

For the true newbie, most of the html5 and php I learned was for free from the remarkable Adam Khoury and his tutorials. I started my javascript adventures at the Khan Academy's Computer programming site. A very fun and free way to begin. Though, later, Paul Irish, A List Apart, css-tricks.com and many others filled in the blank spots.

In conclusion, I'd like to deeply thank the PrestaShop developers, designers, moderators and contributors, @fat and @mdo and the all others for a truly remarkable open source project.  Things of this sort weren't even in the dreams of the dreams of dreamers when I was young. Now they have now made it real for free. Such a gift...