Watch the screencast

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Watch the video guide

Core features

• Unlimited fields: Add as many new fields as you like
• Multiple input types: Choose between text, textarea or select box to perfectly fit the type of data you require from your customers
• Customizable format
• Choose if you want to display the fields in the back office list as well
• Multilanguage labels

The post New module: “Address Fields” just released! appeared first on NemoPS.

Watch the screencast

Final Code

<?php

include(dirname(__FILE__).'/config/config.inc.php');
include(dirname(__FILE__).'/init.php');


// we have a csv file open
$default_lang = Configuration::get('PS_LANG_DEFAULT');
// looping through products
// this is a single line in the loop


$product = new Product(20);
$product->name = [$default_lang => 'Test'];
$product->link_rewrite = [$default_lang => 'test'];
$product->price = 13.90;
$product->quantity = 70;
$product->id_category = [3,4];
$product->id_category_default = 3;
StockAvailable::setQuantity((int)$product->id, 0, $product->quantity, Context::getContext()->shop->id);

$product->update();

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DOWNLOAD THIRTYBEES HERE

ThirtyBees, the PrestaShop 1.6 Fork

For those of you who didn’t read my previous article about ThirtyBees (TB in short), here is a brief: it is the ultimate evolution of PrestaShop 1.6, a fork software that aims to correct all bugs of the base one, improve it, and ultimately meet all of the expectations that the PrestaShop company has miserably failed to fulfill with PrestaShop 1.7.
ThirtyBees is therefore a standalone project based on PrestaShop 1.6, created by passionate developers who were not enthusiast of 1.7, and wanted to carry on and improve the previous version, serious about finally giving merchants the ultimate e-commerce solution they need.

An overall better software

ThirtyBees improves the PrestaShop base in various ways, with an eye on the bugs pointed out by the community, as well as features they request.
No, I am not saying it just cause I am involved in the project, but because it fixed a plethora of PrestaShop bugs and already added a good portion of the long-time-requested features we all wanted. Let’s have a look!

Clean Urls

Yes! At last, a decent system that removed all those old-fashioned numbers from urls, giving us the opportunity to make them as human as possible. It also incorporates a url-history system, so that old urls will redirect to the new ones automatically. Awesome!
This means, of course, that you won’t need any expensive module anymore for this, and free stuff is always good

Page Cache

Cache means speed, and speed is key when it comes to selling online. ThirtyBees implements a better caching system than PrestaShop used to. Consider this test case: default theme, on a slow vps, from 130ms without PageCache (PrestaShop 1.6) to 30ms with ThirtyBees and PageCache enabled.
On slow servers the difference was 10 times faster in favor of ThirtyBees (from 500ms to 50). Quite a bit.

Better Error Reporting

Error reporting is vital if you want your shop to run hassle-free. ThirtyBees has implemented an advanced bug reporting script in the latest release, so that you can debug without showing any code to your users, directly from the back office.

Custom Code

ThirtyBees lets you add custom javascript, css and metas directly from the back office, a simple yet crucial feature PrestaShop should have implemented since ages.

Mailchimp

If you run a medium sized, or even large business, you certainly had to deal with newsletter and marketing. PrestaShop had a poor newsletter module which was not sufficient for the needs of an average store. ThirtyBees implements Mailchimp, with newsletter management, birthday coupons and advanced abandoned cart features. Think of how much you can save in modules, with all these features packed together in the base software!
As a side note, the module is still a little buggy at the time I am writing, but it will be stable soon enough.

PrestaShop User? You can now migrate to ThirtyBees

If you have a PrestaShop 1.6 shop already running, you can now migrate to TB without concern. The 1.0.1 release comes with a migrator tool that converts the original PrestaShop structure into the new one, so that you can keep all of your shop’s data and modules. Ah, yes, nearly every 1.6 module is compatible with ThirtyBees, of course.

The Bottom Line

ThirtyBees is, from an objective standpoint, what the PrestaShop community has been asking for in the last 3 years. It’s fast, stable, and has plenty of features (with more planned, see the roadmap).
Of course, you might be skeptic as I am involved in the Project and this whole article might just be a huge plug for myself. Facts usually work better than words, so if the above got you interested even just a little, head over to the ThirtyBees Download Page, install and test it. I can guarantee you will be positively surprised.
And if you like it, please support the project by giving it a star on GitHub here: https://github.com/thirtybees/ThirtyBees.

Stay tuned for a review video about ThirtyBees coming in the next weeks!

The post ThirtyBees 1.0.1 Stable is now available! appeared first on NemoPS.

We all know PrestaShop has been having crucial core bugs ever since 1.6 has been released (let’s forget about previous ones…). The company has kept ignoring most of them, having only four people in the core development team, and betting everything on marketing. This lead to PrestaShop 1.7, a version which nobody is really happy of, developers, nor merchants.
Prestashop 1.7 has marked a critical downgrade compared to 1.6, seeing features removed, speed decreased, and compatibility with existing modules and themes basically zeroed.
From a developer standpoint, it means having to rewrite modules from the ground up, and getting used to the new interface and codebase. For merchants, it’s a different story, as it makes them prefer other platforms instead of PrestaShop, given the limited number of features, weight, and lack of third party extensions.

With this in mind, a skilled group of developers has started the ambitious project of forking PrestaShop. What does forking mean? It simply means taking an open source project that fell into an impasse state, with another team, and continue its development, independently, split from the original.

Forking PrestaShop 1.6

The idea of forking PrestaShop 1.6 has been discussed among developers for more than a year, when it was clear 1.7 would have marked a substantial difference in the route the software had taken until then. We all committed changes to the PrestaShop project on Git, but the time it always took to see them implemented was a real drag.
We also continued pointing out numerous bugs and flaws through the PrestaShop Forge, but saw most of the requests frustrated with no responses, or in any case every new subversion containing the same bug. Merchants need more. Merchants need stability, and developers need a clear path to follow too.

• Why has PrestaShop’s Advanced Stock Management never been properly implemented?
• What happened to multi-shipping options, available in 1.5?
• Why is PrestaShop still lacking clean urls from the core?
• Why is there no core Blog?

These are just some of the matters ThirtyBees will address.
ThirtyBees wants to clean up PrestaShop 1.6, and continue its development by maintaining the same substantial codebase, improving it while preserving compatibility with current modules and themes as much as possible.

An eye on Merchants, but not only

As previously mentioned, ThirtyBees wants to listen that user base the PrestaShop company has been deaf to, in the last years. Feature requests will be polled, giving merchants an opportunity to really have the software they want, at last.
Additionally, as most users often point out, security will be taken into serious consideration, fixing bugs and flaws of the ever-broken most popular payment solutions, never addressed by PrestaShop.
Developers will not be ignored either, of course. As we all are developers (I am considering myself into the project), we know what makes us frustrated, and what would really make an easier day if added to or removed from the core. Stability will be improved, and an attempt will be made to create a better documentation, so that the platform will finally be accessible to newcomers, and veterans will have a solid base (much like the WordPress codex) to refer to, when needed.

And more coming soon

The ThirtyBees project has not even launched yet, but its plan is ambitious. It wants to be the next best E-Commerce platform of the market, and its promises, and the passion of people who are actively contributing to it, make us hope there really is a bright future for this newborn creature. It will have its own Modules and Themes Store, which will not be vexatious towards contributors, nor buyers, and much more. It will be focused on its community, already counting a good number of enthusiasts all over the world, and will therefore need your contribution, too.
Whether you are a writer, translator, marketer, developer, designer, or anything you think might be useful in such a project, head over to the ThirtyBees Contact page and get in touch with the manager. We will need as much help as possible in making this project successful; and this success will come from nobody, but you.

Additional Resources

• ThirtyBees project website

The post ThirtyBees, a PrestaShop Fork project appeared first on NemoPS.

Watch the Screencast

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I am pleased to announce that I just finished editing my new premium course, this time on PrestaShop Themes! Many merchants usually spend hundreds or thousands, to hire professionals  for basic modifications. With this course, anyone can learn to customize a PrestaShop template and save plenty of bucks!

The course has been released! Click on the image for more info about it.

The post PrestaShop Themes Crash Course – Released! appeared first on NemoPS.

Following my previous post on why PrestaShop 1.7 will be a catastrophe, I thought it was high time to update my thoughts on it, given its official release. Have they changed? No. Here is why.

Slow slow slow

PrestaShop 1.7 is clearly slower than its predecessor. The installation itself (on localhost) took me over 10 minutes because of the page load, and kept hanging on the database connection settings. The new architecture is heavier, meaning it will need a better machine to run the same shop with the same performance. And this, for a merchant, means a bigger investment.

Ugly Design

PrestaShop has never shined for its template, but 1.6’s one was above the average level of a generic, free E-Commerce Platform. Whoever designed the “Classic” theme for PrestaShop 1.7 mistook “essential” with “poor”. This new theme is not “clean”, but rather just empty.
It looks bad, it feels bad and it’s lacking things more than being simplified. It’s dominantly starking white, and let’s just forget about images missing in the category header.
It’s not possible to set images for the top menu, which in return looks barely more than the result of a simple tutorial on creating mega menus.
In the product page, room for the long description has been sacrificed in favor of… nothing?
If you write a little more than a couple of lines (as you normally would, adding extra descriptions and media for the item) you will find yourself with a completely useless half of the page.

Ugly Urls

Some wise guy thought using a single id for each product was not enough. Hence, products with attributes now have 2 IDs in the url, one for the product itself, another for the combination. A plethora of us developers (including me) have developed their own versions of pretty urls, but the core team evidently thinks it’s not something merchants would want in 2016. Of course.

No bug fixes

Have you visited the PrestaShop Forge recently? I did.
Have a look at the bug reports VS fixes metrics on 1.6:
Is it really necessary to release a new version, leaving all these things unsolved?
The Development Team Leader Julien Martin stated 1.7 is not a release about bug fixing. Indeed, but they are still there.

No new features

In the article about the 1.7 release on the PrestaShop Development blog, Xavier Borderie mentions “a number of major features”. Let’s see what they are, according to him:
Symfony 2, new Default Theme and Starter Theme, New Product Back office, reworked modules page, reworked main menu.
Should we dissect them for a second?
Symfony 2: given the fact it’s only been implemented in 2 pages of the back office, it’s not really implemented in all the shop. The front office still uses Smarty.
Themes: I already said enough about the classic one, while the Starter Theme is simply one without any css or js.
New Product Back Office: I give him a point there, it’s the only new feature.
Reworked modules page: More following below
Reworked main menu: They just shuffled items and put some together, so that you have to click more to reach a page you were previously able to see right away (try to reach the customer groups page )
Are these new features? No. Only one is.

Core features removed

Here follows a list of features to which we bid adieu (seems appropriate) with the advent of PrestaShop 1.7:

One Page Checkout (!)
Cart Dropdown (!)
Advanced Stock Management
Font Awesome
Theme Configurator
Live search in the modules section, you have to hit enter
Send to a friend
Ajax removed from order history

Advertisement, plenty of.

As merchant, what would you like to see when you first click on the modules list? I would expect a page where I can configure modules. Things work differently at PrestaShop’s HQ. Apparently, what they like to see when they are configuring their shop is Advertisement. The first page we are presented with, as soon as we click on “modules”, is a nice list of “modules and services selected for you”. Nice.

Still no documentation

During the 1.7 installation process, you are embarrassingly given a link to the 1.6 documentation. Why is PrestaShop still lacking a decent official resource where to look for in case of issues?
Why is there still no sign of a real developer guide? I am guessing nobody really knows the code base.
We are given no indication at all, if any hint on the development blog. The code is not only not documented, it’s not even commented. Developers and users are just left on their own, trying to figure out the ins and outs of each feature, if it ever makes sense.
EDIT: It seems there is a work-in-progress documentation, as Krystian Podemski pointed out in the comments: http://developers.prestashop.com/ although it seems a bit confused to me.

Messed up code

As previously stated, 1.7 comes with a mixed architecture between the old code and Symfony 2. Some pages in the back office use Symfony, some modules use namespaces, the front office theme still uses Smarty, but differently. Overrides are formally deprecated but still available, because there is no valid alternative. Honestly, what should a developer do? Update modules? How, and why, when the core team doesn’t have a clear idea of the next steps, either?

The Puffin won’t save the day

The sad truth, PrestaShop, is that having a mascot won’t save the day. Updating visuals, making pretty commercials, full of dreams and promises, and then coming up with a software that’s a huge step backwards is not the way to go.
I solidarize with John James, who wrote an article on Medium.com, pointing out the faults of the company’s recent decisions. The new CEO, despite making things look prettier, didn’t bring anything good to PrestaShop, and is actually driving it downhill, through a path that will systematically push away every new potential user.
Using the software as bait to make money, by reducing its features, selling people what was previously given for free, is not on the path to popularity. Nor it will bring any growth, and Google Trends clearly show that the interest in PrestaShop is slowly, but constantly decaying.
PrestaShop is sinking, and it will drown unless they change their mentality for good.
We, developers, merchants, who survived and made a living thanks to it so far, can only hope for the good to happen. In the meantime, we will keep supporting 1.6, and, why not, continue to develop and fix bugs, even if just on our own, at least paying attention to our user base.

The post PrestaShop 1.7 is out, here is why it is a failure appeared first on NemoPS.

By default, PrestaShop only lets us restrict access by customer group for categories. This however, is very limiting if you want to create premium products, only available to a certain customer base. With this completely free PrestaShop Module, you can define access for each customer group, product by product.

Download for Free Here!

Core Features

• Compatible with all standard modules
• Hide products pages from the sight, by group
• Hide products from search results
• Great for wholesalers! Create a premium set of products with complete freedom on the category!

The post FREE PrestaShop Module: Product Access appeared first on NemoPS.

An online shop slider is no longer a gimmick, agree? Probably this is the reason you still don’t have it on your PrestaShop website. A slideshow is a traditional attention-grabbing tool, various types of which are constantly improved with new great features. A traditional tool with a lot opportunities, which very often becomes a kind of organic marketing channel for promoting your best or pushing underselling products. Think of it, there are no chances it can have a bad influence on your traffic and sales.

It’s a not a big task to build a catchy slider and track right visitors to the right products, mostly all types of a PrestaShop slider can do that, but still each one has its own features, functions, and, of course, pricing. If you create a slider with a special tone and style, it can have a power of a well-written nifty word helping you engage much more people. And engaging people often lead to sales. Probably it’s hard to make a completely different exclusive slider, but a bit of personalization, attractiveness and your of course quality products are your best weapon.

How to achieve the best results in building a slider with PrestaShop module? Good question. I’d like to give some humble tips, hope they’ll sound fresh for you:

Images. Slider is a gallery of images. Try to make it a kind of art gallery, namely, reduce useless elements. What does that mean? What’s really interesting in product images, they never lie and never say the truth, it’s your chance to be more genuine and open to your customers: risk to show only images or even a slider in a full-screen mode, where the photos are presented in close-up details. They can even go without additional description and compelling calls-to-action, so the visitors are curious to go to the product’s page and find all important info about it. Though it should not be applied to the announcements of deals, offers and sales, where text messages are the most important.

Ads. Don’t advertise too much, people are not interested in ads, they are interested in particular products and want to know more details about it: instead of saying ‘superb belt’ you can better put some useful info about it in short: brand name, material, design, uniqueness, etc. (a quick hint: the best description of your products and services can be found among positive customer feedbacks!).

Quantity. Yes, you want to sell as more products as possible. But that should not mean putting 20 images into one slider – it can load for a long time or even freeze on some devices. Limit it to 5 – 7 slides. You still have a lot of abilities to create several sliders and put it on different pages or simply replace some slides in your main slider from time to time to monitor which ones have higher conversion and product sales.

Hope that helps. Let’s now revises some of the available popular&fresh PrestaShop slider modules that come with some standout features.

Featured Products Slider module

http://addons.prestashop.com/en/8732-featured-products-slider.html

Using this module you can create a stunning slider for featuring your products on Home, Category and Products page. Let’s count the options able to help you maximum personalize the slider:

• Ability to choose a slider position (center, column, none)
• Setting width and height of the slider
• Timing of pauses
• Sorting the products (Random, Top sellers, Most viewed, Recently added)
• Showing/hiding: a product title, description, price, ‘add to cart button’, navigation buttons/arrows
• Customizable colors, background, product limits and count, a number of scrolled products
• Well-documented module.

Layer Slider

http://addons.prestashop.com/en/19062-layer-slider-responsive-slideshow.html

One of the most popular PrestaShop sliders with very good customers’ review. It’s a fully responsive multipurpose tool that comes with 200 presets, 2D and 3D slide transition. Using this module, you are provided with numerous advantages:

• Admin tools with drag-and-drop nature
• Real-time slide preview
• Swipe navigation support
• Lazy-loads for better slider performance
• All types of content layers (text, image, video)
• Compatibility with old browsers
• Multiple sliders on a single page
• full-width, full size or fixed dimensions layouts are available
• Optional auto-start of the slideshow
• Pauses control
• Optional random slideshow
• Opportunity to link any layer to a particular URL.

MotoPress Slider Module

http://addons.prestashop.com/en/21880-motopress-slider.html

This module is 3 in 1 solution: image, video and product slider, so it can become your ultimate tool in building diverse sliders. The admin tools look like ones of the most user-friendly with simple animated layers (text, image, video, etc), visual style builder and many auto-embeds of your content. The main advantages include:

• Fully responsive and retina-ready design
• Supports swipe navigation
• Visually customizable fonts, background, and other slider design elements
• Ability to preview slider in backend
• Saving and reusing your custom styles
• Full-screen slider support plus options for manual slider width/height settings
• Animation effects and ability to preview them before applying
• Safe import/export of your data
• Showing products in the slider using macros (auto-embedded slider elements) like Price, Add to cart button, etc.
• Enabling slideshow on different website widget areas
• Ability to display the products by categories, tags, in-stock products, on-sale items, including/excluding the products by ID.
• Link a slide to URL ability.

Slider and Push Products

http://addons.prestashop.com/en/4780-slider-push-products-2-in-1.html

The slider developed by Prestashop, which can mean a good reliable product.. It’s a 2 in 1 solution: you can create a slideshow and push the needed products of your online store. The main features include:

• Shop format adaptation: display both slideshow and push products in two or three-column layout
• Fully customizable: 9 predefined layouts (among them 5 come with slideshow)
• Ability to display different images for different language speakers
• Option to link a slide to an external website

Slider by Category Module

http://addons.prestashop.com/en/17308-slider-by-category.html

Despite its limit of displaying the products by category only, this fact can become your advantage as you won’t need to deal with numerous of additional settings. What options does website administrator have? Let’s see:

• Customizable height and width of the slider
• Control over slides timing and speed
• Selectable categories for adding, enabling, editing or deleting slides.

Do you probably use any other PrestaShop slider module that can provide users with more customization freedom and more possibilities? Don’t hide this info then!

Author bio

Ann is an open source and folk music lover. She likes blogging and learning SEO techniques.

Find Ann on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mainoxa

The post How to Promote Your Products with PrestaShop Slider Modules appeared first on NemoPS.