Downloading PrestaShop
Visit www.prestashop.com to get your free copy of PrestaShop. Click on the Download option. Select your favorite language and click on the big green button Download Now. It is optional whether you fill in the very brief registration information. When you click on the download button you should have a zipped file called prestashop_1.5.x.x.zip, where x.x is the version of PrestaShop you have downloaded. The version number you have doesn’t matter. As long as you follow the download link from the PrestaShop home page, you will have the latest stable version.
In the next tutorial, we will upload all the loose unzipped files to your web server. It is worth pointing out that you might save some time by uploading the zipped file and using your web host’s file manager to do the unzipping. As most web hosts use a slightly different system, I will guide you through unzipping first. But if you know how to use your web host’s file manager to do this, you could save some time while uploading. You decide. Unzip it now to prepare for the next guide and you will be left with a folder called prestashop.
Technical requirements
To install PrestaShop on a computer, you will need a prepared package. WAMP for Windows, which you can download from www.wampserver.com, or if you are Mac user you could use MAMP, which can be downloaded from www.mamp.info. You can also use XAMPP to install PrestaShop in a different OS and you can download it from www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html.
To install PrestaShop on the Internet you will need a domain name, a web server like Apache, Nginx, or Microsoft IIS with PHP 5.1 or higher installed and enabled, and MySQL 5.0 or higher installed with a database created and FTP access.
Now that you have downloaded and unzipped the PrestaShop files, it’s time to put them onto your website ready to install. If you are hosting at home, this is a simple matter of putting them in the Apache home folder (see my downloadable guide if you’re unsure where this is).
If you are developing on a live server, then you need to transfer the files via FTP. Let’s do that step-by-step.
