How do I activate caching on Prestashop?

Procédure

What is the purpose of caching your web pages?

Caching your web pages will speed up browsing and reduce the bandwidth usage of your shared web hosting as well as the load on the server hosting your website.

How do I activate caching on Prestashop?

1. Connect to theadministration of your Prestashopwebsite. You have received an email from LWS with all the information you need to connect to your dashboard.

2. Click on the"Advanced settings" tab and then on"Performance" to access the page caching configuration.

Configuring the Smarty cache on Prestashop

The"Smarty" box allows you to make the general settings for caching your website.

1. You can choose whether or not to compile the templates for your Prestashop website. Compiling the template will reduce the load on your web hosting and increase browsing performance within your website.

• Never recompile template files: Pages are compiled once and then cached. The pages will be displayed as they are, even if your theme is modified using the .TPL files.
• Recompile template files if they have been updated: recompiles your theme's .TPL files if you update them.
• Force compilation on every call: Only activate if you want to track changes to your theme in real time.
  

In the event of a major change to your graphic theme, the Smarty cache may not update automatically and immediately. In this case, you have two options to remedy the problem:

• Manually delete the contents of the"compile" directory located in the"tools/smarty" directory. This is done using your FTP client.
• Force compilation in the"Preferences/Performances" tab of your website administration.

2. Activate the cache by clicking"Yes". Once active, it is not recommended to deactivate it unless you want to change your graphic theme. Server synchronisation is deactivated by default. This option allows you to synchronise caching between different servers, if you use several servers to run your website.

3. By default, Prestashop uses file caching. To do this, the folder must be writable. You can change this to MySQL caching. However, it is advisable to use file caching rather than MySQL caching. MySQL caching can increase the use of MySQL resources and requests, which can in some cases have the opposite effect and slow down certain pages on your site.

4. Depending on how often you are going to make changes to your shop, you can choose never to empty the cache or to empty it each time you make a new change. It is advisable to clear the cache each time you make a change. Otherwise, the changes will not be visible on your website.

Configuring Prestashop Debug Mode

The Debug mode available on Prestashop allows you to easily locate the source of an error on your website.

• Deactivation of modules not developed by Prestashop: When you install a module, it is preferable to choose a module developed by Prestashop or by one of the coders approved by this company. The modules offered on the "addons" site have been extensively tested to guarantee their reliability. The deactivation of modules not developed by Prestashop will show whether the problem comes from the core or modules developed by Prestashop or a module developed by someone else.
• Deactivate overloads: deactivates all overloads in the coding.
• Debug mode: displays errors on your shop's management interface. This function is often used when modifying the coding of a theme or a module.
  

Configuring deactivatable features

Prestashop allows you to deactivate features that you do not use on your website in order tooptimise the performance of your online shop.

Compression and caching

These are 3 tools for minimising server load and increasing the loading speed of your web pages.

• "Smartcache" for style sheets: Allows you to combine and compress all the .CSS style sheets on your website.
• "Smartcache" for JavaScript code: Allows you to combine and compress all your JavaScript code. It is important to test this function before leaving the setting on"Enabled". Javascript code may no longer load at all. In some cases, your site may no longer display properly.
• Apache optimisation: This setting allows you to change the Apache configuration to make it more efficient.
  

Media server configuration

Configuring media servers allows you to redirect web traffic to other servers in your possession in order to reduce the response time of your web pages. High-traffic sites often use remote servers for their images and videos. This feature can be very useful when you have several thousand images and/or videos on your website.

To do this, the"img"themes" and"modules" folders must be identical between your web space and the remote server. In addition, your folders must always be synchronised.

Conclusion

You are now able to activate caching on your Prestashop Site on your Ecommerce Hosting with LWS. Caching allows you to speed up your website.

Don't hesitate to share your comments and questions!