For those of you that have watched my video on installing a new theme in PrestaShop 1.5.x, you may be wondering wether that tutorial will still work with PrestaShop 1.6.x and the answer to that question is no and I know this because I’ve tried using those steps.
This is mainly because themes are now only installed via the PrestaShop admin panel. While version 1.5.x also provided a way to install a theme via the admin panel, when I tried, I was unable to install the theme properly that way.
So can you really install a theme via the admin panel in PrestaShop version 1.6.x? Well, you can but you may get the error “file is too big” if your settings don’t support large file uploads.
So how do you get around this error? Well, in the video below I show you how:
Can’t view the video? Watch it on YouTube
Start by downloading your theme:
Note that all PrestaShop 1.6.x themes should be zipped. So when downloading your theme, make sure that your browser doesn’t unarchive your theme.
In my case Safari did unarchive my downloads upon download and I fixed this by going to “Safari > preferences” and unchecking the box “open “safe” files after downloading” in the general tab of the window dialog.
Install your new theme:
To start simply go to your PrestaShop admin panel and click on “preferences > themes” and then once on the “themes” page click on the “add new theme” link at the top of the page.
In the “import from your computer section” simply click on the “add file” button and select your zipped file which contains your theme and then click on the “save” button.
Fixing errors:
If you get the error “file is too big” you can fix this by either changing your file upload size limits or by uploading the theme via an FTP client.
I decided to fix the error by uploading via an FTP client not only because it’s faster than changing your file upload size limits but also because it’s faster uploading a theme via an FTP client than it is via the admin panel.
So even if you can upload via the admin panel without running into errors, I still think it’s better to upload via an FTP client.
Upload the theme via an FTP client:
To start, simply launch your FTP client and upload your theme to the “themes” directory of your store.
Select your new theme:
After you’ve finished uploading the theme, simply go back to your admin panel and click on “preferences > themes” and click on the “add new theme” at the top of the page.
In the “import from FTP” section, select your new theme using the drop down menu which is located next to “select the archive” and click on the “save” button.
After saving your new theme, you will get the message “successful upload” if the theme was saved successfully.
Enable your new theme:
Now you will want to enable the new theme by going to “preferences > themes” and in the “select a theme for the “store name” shop” select the new theme by clicking on the “use this theme” button.
On the next page PrestaShop will ask you wether you’d like to install the modules that your new theme came with as well as wether you’d like to disable other modules or enable other existing modules.
After making these selections, simply click on the “save” button.
Regenerate your images:
After enabling your theme, you will want to regenerate your images by to the thumbnails regeneration page.
In the regenerate thumbnails section simply click on the “regenerate thumbnails” button.
At this point your new theme should be showing up in your store. Note that the overall look of your theme and store and has a lot to do with which modules have been enabled and how those modules were configured. For more information on this, you will want to read the instructions that came with your theme.