How to Upgrade PrestaShop 1.7 to 8

How to Upgrade PrestaShop 1.7 to 8: Launched in 2007, PrestaShop has become one of the best eCommerce platforms for creating an online store due to its out-of-the box features. PrestaShop is easy to use and offers a user-friendly administrative onterface. It is currently used by 300,000 shops worldwide and is available in 60 different languages.

PrestaShop 8, the first major version since the original release of PrestaShop 1.7.0 in 2016, will be a new evolution for the platform.

PrestaShop 8 comes with a wide range of new advance features and in this blog post I will explain them in detail.

In addition to over 170 bug fixes, PrestaShop 8 brings compatibility with PHP 8.1, enhanced security, faster loading speed, and much more.

Compatibility Support

PrestaShop version 8 is compatible with PHP version 8.0 and 8.1. Running PrestaShop on the most recent PHP version is important as each PHP version brings performance and security improvements. Also, compatibility with PHP version 8 will help you store run faster.

Enhanced Security

Security is one of the top priorities for every online store. Some improvements have been done in PrestaShop 8 to strengthen the security for protection against online threats.

A new security page added in restaShop 8 that allows the shop administrators to manage their customer & employee sessions and configure password policy.

Password policy

Strong passwords are essential to the security of any e-commerce site as well as to individual users. Online merchants can select the password security score between 0 to 4 with 0 meaning extremely easy to guess and 4 very unguessable. This will allow the store managers decide how strict they want to be about user passwords.

During registration, the users now get color-coded indication while setting up the password. This will help them understand whether their password is strong enough and meet store’s minimum requirements.

Manage customer and employee sessions

Shop administrators can now see history of users and employees sessions. Delete a session and sign out the user by clicking on the delete button in the Actions column.

Protection against SQL injection attacks

SQL injections are one of the most common cybersecurity threats and can have potentially devastating effects for online shops. Attackers use them to bypass a website’s authentication controls and steal sensitive data. PrestaShop 8 includes enhanced protection against SQL injection attacks, thus helping protect your data and your customer’s data.

Faster Loading Speed

Speed is an integral part of the of the user experience in eCommerce websites. When customers open the website for the very first time, they expect it to load quickly and any delay can lead to lost sales.

As compared to PrestaShop 1.7, PrestaShop 8 has undergone significant architectural and performance improvements. The new version includes an update to Symfony 4.4, which means that it will benefit for high performance and security enhancements of the framework’s latest version.

Thanks to the new caching engine used in PrestaShop 8 which makes it quicker than PrestaShop 1.7. The new caching engine reduces the page load time and increase the speed of an online shop.

Image Formats

PrestaShop 8 supports the popular WebP format for your products. WebP images are smaller in size compared to PNG and JPEG but maintain the same quality. With smaller images, your website tends to load faster and ranks better on SEO.

To configure the image settings, navigate to Design > Image Settings > Images generation options.

Also, the store owners can now upload the store logo in SVG image format.

New Product Page

As compared to PrestaShop version 1.7.8, the product page in PrestaShop 8 has been significantly improved. Combination management and bulk edition has been enhanced.

In PrestaShop 8.0, the new product page is disabled by default bcecause it does not include all the features of the standard product page. However, you can still activate it under Advanced Parameters > New & Experimental Features > Experimental features.

SEO Features

SEO is essential as it helps your website rank higher in search engines, allowing you to have better visibility. As compared to its predecessor – PrestaShop 1.7, PrestaShop 8 has several new features.

Additional description for categories: You can now add a block of search engine optimized text at the bottom of the category pages to enhance their visibility in SERPs.

Add page number in meta title tags: Page number is now included in meta title tags on pages like new products, best sales, etc. Adding page number will help search engines understand these pages better.

Crawlers prevention: The administrators can now use 410 gone status for the discontinued items to keep them out of the search engine results.

Content length suggestions: Real-time character count is available in certain text fields in SEO, CMS, and traffic sections which helps the administrators maintain the description limit.

DKIM signatures for emails

Reduce the risk of your shop’s emails being marked as spam. You can configure the DKIM signatures under Advanced Parameters > E-mail.

Before upgrading PrestaShop 1.7 to 8, you must ensure that your store complies with the system requirements listed below:

• Web server: Apache web server 2.4 or any later version. (Apache web server 2.2 is still compatible, but it is not recommended since it reached it EOL in 2018).
• PHP: PHP 8.1 is advisable. (Although compatible, PHP 7.2.5 to 8.0 are not recommended because they reached or will reach soon their end of support.
• MYSQL: At least 5.6, a recent version is preferred.
• Server RAM: The more, the better. We recommend allocating at least 256M of RAM per script.

You can upgrate PrestaShop 1.7 to 8 by using the upgrade assistant or manual method.

Using upgrade assistant

1-Click Upgrade module allows you to upgrade to the lastest version of PrestaShop in a few clicks. The module lets you choose the version to which you want to upgrade and displays a pre-upgrade checklist to remind you of essential steps before upgrading.

To perform the upgrade, download the latest version from this link. Then, go to the Module Manager page and click on “Upload a module” button.

Before upgrade, make sure to make a full manual backup of your files and database.

Once you have successfully installed the module, the configuration page displays some checks and the options available for upgrade.

The first configuration lets you decide what kind of PrestaShop update to install. It is recommended to stick with the minor/significant options since they use some extra information provided by PrestaShop.

It is always recommended to allow the module to create its own backup to ensure that your store immediately run a rollback if something goes wrong during the upgrade.

Finally, the last options customizing the upgrade process let you keep any changes you have done to the default theme, mails etc.

If the configuration selected and self-checks are valid, you can now click “Upgrade Now” button to upgrade PrestaShop 1.7 to 8.

Via CLI module

Another way to upgrade from PrestaShop 1.7 to 8 is via the CLI (Command Line Interface) module. To upgrade your PrestaShop store to the latest version using the Command Line Interface, follow the steps outlined below.

• Uninstall the old autoupgrade module: php bin/console prestashop:module uninstall autoupgrade
• Delete the old directory: rm -rf modules/autoupgrade
• Install the latest version of autoupgrade module and place it in the /modules directory: curl -L https://github.com/PrestaShop/autoupgrade/releases/latest/download/autoupgrade.zip -o modules/autoupgrade.zip && unzip modules/autoupgrade.zip
• Install the new version of the autoupgrade module: php bin/console prestashop:module install autoupgrade
• Download PrestaShop version 8 to your device: curl -L https://github.com/PrestaShop/PrestaShop/releases/download/8.0.2/prestashop_8.0.2.zip -o admin-dev/autoupgrade/download/prestashop.zip
• Create a configuration file for the AutoUpgrade module to use the local archive. echo “{\”channel\”:\”archive\”,\”archive_prestashop\”:\”prestashop.zip\”,\”archive_num\”:\”8.0.2\”, \”archive_xml\”:\”prestashop.xml\”, \”PS_AUTOUP_CHANGE_DEFAULT_THEME\”:0, \”skip_backup\”: 1}” > modules/autoupgrade/config.json
• Configure the autoupgrade module: php modules/autoupgrade/cli-updateconfig.php –from=modules/autoupgrade/config.json –dir=admin-dev
• Initiate the upgrade process: php modules/autoupgrade/cli-upgrade.php –dir=admin-dev

How Webkul can help in upgrading

As you know now that PrestaShop 8 comes with a wide range of advanced features. From fast loading speed to improved security and from optimized SEO features to enhance checked this version of PrestaShop has it all that you require to provide satisfying shopping experience and grow your business.

Upgrading from PrestaShop 1.7 to 8 manually could prove to be a strenuous job, especially for the beginners with limited coding and development knowledge.

But no problem! We will help you in making this process as easy as possible. With over 11 years in the eCommerce industry, Webkul has gained extensive knowledge of PrestaShop. We can help you migrate PrestaShop 1.7 to 8 smoothly and efficiently.

Upgrading PrestaShop modules and migrating related data

Prestashop Modules/Third Party modules/Webkul Modules : We need to check if the compatible version for the same is available for PrestaShop 8 or not. If it is available, we will install the same and migrate the data for the same.

Please note that for the third Party modules or Prestashop Modules (Non Webkul Modules) you will have to provide the module compatible files for Prestashop 8. If the module does not have a compatible version for Prestashop 8 and you need the same then we will have to custom develop it for you.

Theme Compatibility

You need to first find a compatible theme for Prestashop 1.7. For Prestashop 1.7 platform, it is mandatory that the theme must be made on the Starter theme.

Customization

• Prestashop core customization : If any customization had been done in the core Prestashop files then it will be lost during upgrade and will have to be redone.
• Third Party customization : Any third party customization done will be lost. You can ask the developers of the customization to do it for you. If you want, we can do it for you.

Important points :

You need to take a back up for your entire Prestashop before Upgrading or Migration. Webkul
will take a backup as well. You need to create a replica/test setup of your Prestashop and this whole process will be done on the same and not on the Live server.

After the upgrade and the migration on the test server, you need to ask your host provider to move this to your live url. Webkul will not move the data to your live site after doing the work on the test site. You need to make your test site live after the work is done.

Now that you have seen the new features of PrestaShop 8, it’s right time to upgrade to the latest PrestaShop 8. However, before making any changes, I would recommend hiring a developer experienced in PrestaShop that will guide you through the entire process and resolve problems efficiently if they arise.

You can also explore our PrestaShop development services and vast range of featureful PrestaShop Addons.