If you’ve just setup your PrestaShop store, you will want to put that store into maintenance mode prior to configuring your store and adding products. I say this because an empty store will lead to a bad user experience which can also lead to poor Google rankings.
Note that in addition to maintenance mode, there is also “catalog mode” which is great if you want to create a store that only showcases your products. In other words, visitors can view the you sell, but they can’t actually purchase them online.
Personally, I think this is great if you have a furniture store and want to establish yourself online yet would prefer that customers purchase the products locally.
Aside from that, catalog mode can also serve useful if you would like to temporarily disable online purchasing would like to keep your store up and running during a set period of time.
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How to put your store in maintenance mode:
To put your store in maintenance mode, simply go to your admin panel, “preferences” and “maintenance”.
Then select “no” for “enable shop”, click on the “add my IP” button and then click on the “save” button.
Note that we are clicking the “add my IP” button because we want to be able to view our storefront while the site is down for maintenance. For those of you that are not familiar with IP addresses, this address is provided by your internet service provider and it’s used by PrestaShop to determine which users the maintenance page is displayed to.
So while your IP address is saved and you visit your storefront via a computer that uses the saved IP address, you will not see the maintenance page.
So to see the maintenance page, you will want to visit your storefront using another internet connection. For example, if you have a smartphone with internet access, you can view your site through the smartphone.
Now if you’d like to add other IP addresses, you can always visit the maintenance page in your admin panel via those other internet connections and add those IP addresses as well. Alternatively, you can visit whatismyip.com or a similar site, and add each of those IP addresses separated by a comma (,) on the maintenance page in the admin panel.
When you are ready to take your store out of maintenance mode, simply go back to “preferences” and “maintenance” and select “yes” for “enable shop” and click on the “save” button.
Put your store in catalog mode:
To put your store in catalog mode, simply go to your admin panel, “preferences” and “products”, select “yes” for “catalog mode” and click on the “save” button.