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- Prestashop Tutorial
If you are looking for high-performance alternatives to the classic PrestaShop theme, you are in the right place. In this article, we will explore some of the best free prestashop templates that can serve as valid alternatives to the classic theme. The Classic template of PrestaShop is a project at the end of its life and not very performant; what alternatives exist while waiting for the new Hummingbird theme? Besides commercial themes like WareHouse, there are some interesting projects. Some of which aim to improve accessibility, which is often overlooked.
PrestaShop is a widely used e-commerce platform that offers a variety of themes to customize your online store.
However, the Classic template of PrestaShop was introduced with the beta of version 1.7, but its development has not kept up with all the updates of the CMS. For example, even with the latest version, there is no support for high-resolution images for Apple’s retina display with high pixel density. PrestaShop features the option "Generate high-resolution images" in the back-end, which can be activated in: Design > Image Settings.
To be precise, as of today, I do not know of any templates that utilize this functionality. PrestaShop correctly generates 2x images for such devices if we enable the option, but these are not used. For more information, see: PrestaShop: 2x image and WebP support
As we can read here:
https://github.com/PrestaShop/PrestaShop/issues/26599
The issue will not be resolved in the Classic template; in fact, the project is almost completely abandoned and has been moved to a dedicated repository. Efforts are focused on the new template for version 8.0 of PrestaShop, which is expected to bring another important update regarding images with native support for the WebP format. There are no plans to maintain both.
PrestaShop Classic Rocket
A Free PrestaShop Template derived from the Classic theme. The template has been designed to maximize performance, accessibility, and SEO optimization. It reduces the CSS of the Classic template from 80kb to 33kb and the JS from 155kb to 86kb. It uses the latest version of Bootstrap, lazy loading, and the srcset attribute for images in product-cover-thumbnails.tpl. It brings many improvements that allow for a perfect score in Google PageSpeed.
Unfortunately, it is not compatible with the very latest versions of PrestaShop. The current version 3.1 is compatible at most with PS 1.7.6.X
This is a significant limitation; we will need to use PHP 7.2 and manually fix some security vulnerabilities.
You can follow the project from here:
https://github.com/prestarocket-agence/classic-rocket
PrestaShop Modern Starter Theme
Another Free PrestaShop Template derived from the Cassic theme. This theme is designed to maximize performance, promising 100/100 in Google PageSpeed, and extremely fast loading times. It uses Webpack 5.53 and Bootstrap 4.6.
It is intended as a starting theme for developers, providing them with the latest tools and frameworks available.
Compared to Classic Rocket, it is also available for the latest version of PrestaShop, but it is not suitable for the end user.
The appearance is spartan, almost vintage, definitely aimed at accessibility for people with disabilities, which is often overlooked as it is not graphically appealing, so if you want to develop a custom theme, it can be a good starting point. By using it as a base, compared to the Classic theme, we will already have everything updated.
You can follow the project from here:
https://github.com/Oksydan/modern-prestashop-starter-theme
Theme ClassicBlinders
Among the free themes for PrestaShop, it is the most interesting project, designed to achieve the highest score in the Core Web Vitals metrics and for SEO optimization. It brings several improvements in the checkout and in the user management area (my account).
Among the three free projects to improve the Classic theme, it is definitely the most refined.
In this case, we are also faced with a spartan theme that is very similar to the Classic theme of PrestaShop, which serves as an excellent base for developing a custom theme. While waiting for the new Hummingbird and PrestaShop 8.
You can follow the project from here:
https://devblinders.com/es/theme-classicblinders-para-prestashop.html
Resources for further exploration:
If you want to learn more about how to install a PrestaShop template, how to properly conduct performance testing for PrestaShop, or how to check if the e-commerce is responsive, meaning suitable for all devices, there are many resources available.
Author: Loris Modena
SENIOR DEVELOPER
Per Ind Loris Modena, owner of Arte e Informatica, started working in the IT sector in 1989 as a system administrator responsible for the maintenance and installation of computer systems. He began programming for the web in 1997, focusing on CGI programming in PERL and later transitioning to programming in PHP and JavaScript. During this time, he became familiar with the Open Source world and the management of Linux servers.