I am not a full time writer as are most authors I know, but after years of doing business and using variety of softwares and programs, I felt that I needed to document the knowledge and experience I acquired throughout using the programs in various applications and figure out a means to share them with others. My work also involved training college graduates for hands-on knowledge about applying the relevant programs to meet organisational objectives. Eventually, I have started to document most of the stuff I covered in my daily routines of training them. Takes time but it becomes handy when the need arises. As newer programs cropped up more and more of these are necessary and kept updated.
Writing it out is useful to record and communicate the information and diseminate knowledge; whether the writings are scribed on stone, a papyrus, a paper or a digital book (e-books) and distributed in variety of ways. Writing a book on the topics will also help more people to benefit from our experiences.
This book on PrestaShop was started while I was working on another e-commerce site project as a client was figuring out how to migrate their existing blog to a shopping cart and integrating it with a payment system. One of the options we considered was PrestaShop as someone pointed out the upward trending of this open source e-commerce cart. I found PrestaShop quite easy to handle and manage. It uses the smarty templating system that enables changing theming it without bothering with core files unless really drastic modifications are required.
A little bit about me, my academic background is bent towards designing but of course as internet and the new media are now almost second nature to the human being, the newer career paths, skills and fields or courses are developed. Since 1999, I have started to self-learn and explore a number of graphics and multimedia tools. Then I got the opportunity to be involved with multimedia contents, e-learning and various web development projects. As my interest became my job, I took up a post graduate degree to formalize my experiences as paper qualifications are still necessary in most part of the world. It took me two years to complete it and it wasn't very easy too as I was juggling a few things at the same time.
Anyway, Internet has changed so many things including the way people do business and entertaining themselves. No one in the previous decade would ever consider learning through their mobile gadgets, or blogging as a full time job.. or even do business in their pyjamas, but now there are plenty that make money online without getting out of their homes. It has also changed how people connects and socialize, how they learn and play - it has certainly changed the landscape of careers and professions and how people carry out businesses and transactions.
More and more people are setting up their part time or full time businesses with low starting up costs and almost zero overheads using various shopping cart systems. PrestaShop is one of the platforms that can be considered the enablers for this changing lifestyle where anyone can start their own virtual stores and become entrepreneurs!
Having a great looking site is imperative to make you stand out from the crowd as more people are venturing into online businesses. You can find t-shirts, premium items, baby and maternity stuff as amongst the most popular products people sell online. A lot of these people do not have the time to worry about designing as businesses are meant to be profitable and there are a lot of marketing, selling, promoting activities are involved. If you are a solo player it will be tough to be "everything" to your business. No one has ALL the traits required and many have difficulty to grasp the fact that it is not very easy to build a successful business, virtually or brick-n- mortar. For an online business, acquiring some knowledge about how to promote your services and products and get site visitors and attracting repeat ones who then are converted to buyers are fundamental. There are of course the administrative aspects of a business you needed to take care of, stuff such as inventory if you are purchasing the stocks, plus how to make sure your store front or display looks nice to the passers by. Those in the field of retailing would understand how creative displays attract people to visit stores. Then there is the technical aspect which you will need to cover for online store. Some people are turned off by the fact that they needed to learn a new platform before they can launch their online stores.
PrestaShop is one shopping cart with the easiest installation. You can have a look at the video tutorials in our Prestapoint.com website on how to install your first PrestaShop store within less than 10 minutes.
You will definitely need to configure and add products to your store. Even with a website designed by someone else you will still need to do that unless you planned to outsource the entire setting up and maintaining the website to another party. If you are just starting out, it will be too much to pay for since you have not even made any profit. Moreover, updating inventories and products lists in your catalogue can be done quite easily once you have configured the store.
The learning curve for PrestaShop is not as steep as some shopping cart system that require indepth knowledge of web programing as the Back Office user interface is user friendly.
Another important consideration is after you completed your installation, you will need to give the store a unique look. However, life has been easier now as there are many ready-made templates that you can use to start off. There are free ones but lately there are more premium themes developed for certain prices. A lot of time these templates or themes come with their own instructions. If you do not have anyone to help you out, how do you modify them to customize it as your own? These are questions that many newbies want to know fast and speedily.
PrestaShop forum is one place you can visit to gain some information or find solution from the community which is very friendly and quite active. The technical reviewers of this book are active contributors to the community in PrestaShop forums.
If you do not want to scrub through the forums and google information, save time by using this step by step guide. These are the main problems/questions the book attempts to solve. Problems in modifying themes and creating new ones. You don't want your shop to look like someone else's. You can pick and choose areas that you want to cover or simply learn sequentially to complete the entire book and "graduate" in making up a theme for your store. It doesn't answer to everything as the CSS file of PrestaShop controls many aspects and elements of your PrestaShop store, but just like the old saying
Give a Man a Fish, Feed Him For a Day. Teach a Man to Fish, Feed Him For a Lifetime
Even if this beginner guide let's you the step by step processes to acheive specific outcomes, it also covers how you can apply the knowledge to make changes in the other elements, using free tools such as notepad, Firebug and some web development tools in Firefox. There are various free online resources which are listed to simplify your tasks as well.
I have created the website www.Prestapoint.com which is the support site for this book. I deliberately separate the blog and the website for some reasons. More contents are being worked on and some are still in the pipeline but it definitely will take sometime to put them up here - moreover, as PrestaShop is also progressively changing and updated, I am sure the topics we can cover will also be as dynamic.
This book is suitable for less techie person or non-technical designer to create great looking shopping cart for their online stores. Theme modification can be done through "playing" around with one or two files which are covered pretty extensively in the PrestaShop Theming Beginner's Guide book. Built in modules can be configured to most store needs.
You may also want to communicate your queries and thoughts on this site and there are various ways to do just that ( facebook and google connection) or send them directly to via my email.
In this blog I may be talking about many topics, mostly will be related to the book but it may also cover my other interests. I hope you will join me here often.
That's all as a starting point. Let me know what you would like to see included in the Prestapoint site. If you have created a new look for your online store or site please feel free to share with us what you have done.
well done...keep up the good work
ReplyDeleteHayati,
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for this book. I just finished reading it and I'm very happy with the content you've provided. This information was an excellent compliment to the previous book I read called PrestaShop 1.3 Beginners Guide, which is also from Packt Publishing.
There is so little documentation on PrestaShop that I would consider this an essential resource for any beginners. I've also read the PrestaShop 1.3 User Guide from PrestaShop.com and it does not cover most of the information you touch on in your book. That guide is very basic. Even much more basic than the other 1.3 Beginners Guide from Packt Publishing.
I really appreciated you tutorials on all the modules you can use such as the horizontal menu bar, Wiznav. The Gallery and jcarousel tutorials were excellent as well and something I intend on implementing in my store in some fashion.
Thanks again and I hope you are going to create a more advanced level book as well.