How to Speed Up PrestaShop
20 Jul 2016

How to Speed Up PrestaShop

PrestaShop may become a perfect choice for those who want to trade their goods with the help of the internet. This engine has a great bunch of advantages to be chosen among its counterparts. For instance, PrestaShop is cross platform software that is spread on the internet completely free of charge. It means you can create an awesome online store or the goods catalogue with its help and without paying a single cent for it.

PrestaShop is a modular and flexible system. The online store resembles a shop window which features a handy panel to operate its activity and its logic. If you have the basic knowledge of PHP, it will be easy for you to create your own frames and make your store a unique one.

Though this software has loads of benefits, some web merchants complain that it’s slow enough to attract customers to their online stores. The clients often have to wait for a certain period of time, before the website’s content will be downloaded. This may become the main reason why they abandon the online shops created with the help of PrestaShop and move to quicker ones.

In case you are using the PrestaShop engine at the moment or plan to do it, follow the tips given below to speed up your web store!

1.     Test Your Store

Before doing any changes to make your online store quicker, ensure that it’s really a slow one. Use Kraken.io, GT Metrix and Pingdom to test it.

For instance, Kraken.io will verify your pictures and then ‘advise’ you how many images should be optimized to hasten your website.

Pingdom will reveal all possible speed problems related to network, server and database. If you want to get a complex check-up and some useful clues to follow, then you must certainly use GT Metrix for testing.

2.     Make Sure That You Are Using the Latest Version

The area of the electronic devices and computer software is very changeable. Every second new ideas appear, and something new is created. If you want to get only positive impressions from using PrestaShop, always keep your software up to date with the latest version available.

3.     Choose a VPS

Choose the country where your web resource will function and get VPS account there. If you operate in more than one country, then try to find the hosting which offers high traffic rate to other countries.

It will be nice if you find the VPS with 6-8GB of RAM and SSD disk.

4.     Configure Your Smarty Tab

Smarty is the template language used on PrestaShop. If you want to hasten your website, you may also make certain changes in the SMARTY tab. You can reach this tab, if you log into your PrestaShop back office>>open ADVANCED PARAMETERS>>PERFORMANCE.

For instance, you can do compilation, caching and clear caching there.

  • Template Compilation

The PrestaShop default template is flexible and the design elements aren’t static. It means each design module connects the online store with its own set of template instructions. All these things give online merchants opportunities to design their own templates for their shops.

Template Compilation setting will give an opportunity to:

[X] Never recompile template files – Choose this option if you like the design and has finished your work with editing files.

[] Recompile templates if the files have been updated – Select this option, if you want to make regular theme changes to your website in the future. The page will recompile only when the theme files are changed.

[] Force compilation – This setting is necessary only if you are going to debug your website.

  • Cache

Caching may become a nice tool to increase your website’s performance and reduce delays.

[x] Yes – Turn on this option to hasten your online store.

[] No – You may stop caching only when you’re creating your theme or make any changes to it. This option must be disabled because otherwise you won’t see the changes you’ve made immediately.

  • Clear Cache

[] Never clear cache files – this option must be selected only when you are doing some bulk actions like CSV import. When the work is finished, turn this option off or clear your cache manually.

[x] Clear cache every time something has been modified – If you want to show your customers the most updated version of your website, just turn on this setting and it will do exactly what it says.

5. CCC (Combine, Compress and Cache)

Once you have decided to speed up your website, don’t forget about using CCC. It’s a set of tools which unites similar text files into a big one and limits the number of files to be downloaded. Then the file is compressed with the help of Zip algorithm to speed up downloading. Finally, the compressed file is cached to eliminate the necessity to perform this process each time a page loads.

All these settings must be done one at time and require certain testing afterwards.

6. CSS, JS and HTML Minification

CSS Minification: this option is able to help you to reduce excess characters by the web browser to interpret the code and improve its readability.

Turn on HTML Minification and increase the server response time about 80ms.

Compress your Javascript into the HTML code and reduce time for each request.

Finally, move Javascript code into the bottom and enable progressive rendering. The page will appear even if the file hasn’t been downloaded yet.

7. Use CDN

If you want to reduce the distance between your server and your shoppers, don’t forget to apply for CDN to improve website performance. Watch a video how to set up PrestaShop CDN integration.

CDNsun knows how to make your online shop download quickly from anywhere in the world.