How to host Prestashop on Digitalocean Droplet - ServerAvatar

PrestaShop is an open-source e-commerce platform known for its robust features and flexibility. It allows businesses to establish and oversee online stores with tools for managing product catalogs, orders, and customer interactions. With a wide range of themes and modules, it makes customization easy to suit specific business needs without extensive technical expertise. When selecting a hosting solution for PrestaShop, DigitalOcean stands out as a reliable option with scalable infrastructure and simple deployment solutions. ServerAvatar makes the deployment of the PrestaShop Application on the DigitalOcean platform straightforward through a simplified process.

Create Server in Digitalocean

Digitalocean is one of the most popular cloud platforms right now. It offers on-demand cloud computing for various use cases as well as some managed solutions. We can deploy any PHP-based applications on Digitalocean Droplets. Droplets are the servers or cloud computing instances in Digitalocean. If you want to learn about droplet management in-depth in Digitalocean, We recommend you to read our Digitalocean guide.

To deploy any application on Digitalocean, We first need a Droplet. So, we will first create a droplet and perform the initial setup.

Step 1: Go to the Create Droplets page.

Log in to your Digitalocean account and click on the Create button given on the top-right corner of the page. From the drop-down menu, click on the Droplets option to see a droplet creation form.

Step 2: Choose Region

On the Droplet creation page, you will find several sections for selecting different options. We will proceed step by step.

The first thing you have to do is select the region for your droplet. Digitalocean provides several options when it comes to selecting the location. The general rule is to select the region that is closest to your audience. It means that for the majority of your audience, Your sites will load faster due to low latency.

Step 3: Choose an Image or an OS

In this step, you have to select the operating system for your droplet. We recommend you to use Ubuntu 20.04 LTS x64 or Ubuntu 22.04 LTS x64. These operating systems are required if you use ServerAvatar to manage your droplets.

Step 4: Choose the size of the Droplet

Here you have to choose the size of your Droplet. As we mentioned above, Digitalocean provides many different types of droplets. Select the one that fits best for your project. To host PrestaShop, the minimum requirements are 1GB of RAM and 1GB or more of disk space, depending on your traffic, the size of your product catalogs, media files, and additional extensions or themes. You can select another plan of higher configuration as per your requirements and usage.

If your site is brand new and does not have much traffic, start with a small plan. Once the project starts getting traction, you can upgrade the plan to handle more visitors on the site.

Step 5: Choose Authentication Method

Now you have to select the authentication method. There are two types of authentication methods. They are as follows:

1. Authentication via SSH Keys
2. Authentication via Password

Using SSH keys for authentication is the best option. If you are not familiar with SSH keys, you can choose the password method. Make sure to set a strong password for your root user, which is the most powerful user with all the privileges on Linux OS.

Step 6: Selecting Additional Options

There are three additional options you can choose from. They are optional but important in different use cases. The additional options are:

1. Monitoring: It is a free feature by Digitalocean. It allows you to see additional monitoring data for your server.
2. Backups: We recommend you to enable full server backups if you are going to deploy in a production environment. The cost of the backups depends on the size of the droplet.
3. Managed Database: You do not need a Managed database if you are using ServerAvatar to manage sites on a droplet. A managed database is a pre-configured MySQL Droplet.

Step 7: Finalise Details

In the last step of this process, We have to enter the name of the droplet, and the number of droplets you want to create, Define any tags, and select the project. Enter all the details and click on the Create Droplet button to create a droplet.

In a few minutes, You will have the Droplet up and running. Now, We have to perform the initial configuration on the Droplet to host PHP-based frameworks and software.

Initial Server Configuration

The Initial server configuration includes the installation and configuration of various packages required to host your website. Usually, You have to write commands and modify configuration files. Luckily, With ServerAvatar, Your full server configuration and optimization can be automated.

Here are the three ways to automatically configure your server with ServerAvatar.

wget https://srvr.so/install
chmod +x install
./install

Auto-install Prestashop with ServerAvatar

Step 1: Create a PHP application

On the server panel, access the Application tab from the sidebar and click the Create button like the image below.

Fill up the details, including the Application Name, Primary Domain name, and other Advanced Settings if required.

Note that:

If you want to host the PrestaShop e-commerce platform on your domain, then make sure to point your domain to the current IP address of your server, and for that:

1. Log in to your hosting provider site, where you buy your domain. You can check your domain information with one click.

2. Access DNS Manager to edit your DNS records(contact the support team if you don’t find them)

3. Change the IP address of A Record of your website to the current server’s IP address.

Click the Create Application button.

Step 2: Auto-install PrestaShop with ServerAvatar

Now on the application panel, click the Auto Deploy button from the sidebar.

Click the PrestaShop Auto Install card, as you can see in the above image.

It asks to enter PrestaShop details to deploy an application, which includes-

Database details

• Database Server: Select the server you want to host your database.
• Database Name: Enter the database name.

PHP Settings

• PHP Version: Select the supported PHP version for the Prestashop application

Admin Information

• First Name:Admin's first name
• Last Name: Admin last name
• Email: Admin email address. This email will be used in case you forget your password
• Password: Admin login password

Once you fill in all the details, click the Install Now button.

Step 3: Install SSL Certificates

Go to the application panel. Click the SSL Certificate tab from the sidebar.

You can also Force HTTP to HTTPS to redirect all your traffic to the secure connection.

Access the URL of your application on the browser and log in using admin credentials to use the Prestashop admin panel.

That’s it. Now you can add your products and manage all your products on one dashboard.