This brief tutorial shows students and new users how to install PrestaShop eCommerce platform with Apache on Windows 10 WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) 2 with Ubuntu OS.
PrestaShop is an eCommerce solution with all the features you need to create an online store and grow your business. It lets you create your own online store in your own environment with your own servers.
Now that you can install Linux OS inside Windows via WSL, the steps below show you how to install PrestaShop in Windows with Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).
With WSL, you can install and run full Linux operating system inside Windows. So get Windows, enable WSL, install a Linux OS and run PrestaShop.
Back in 2017, Windows released the original WSL version. WSL 2 is an improvement over version 1 and comes with performance boost, full system call compatibility, and built with a new architecture and that delivers features that make WSL an amazing way to run a Linux environment in Windows.
If you have a machine that meets the requirements above to run WSL 2, then continue below.
To get started with running PrestaShop on Windows with WSL, follow the steps below:
Enable WSL in Windows
To enable WSL in Windows, you will want to open PowerShell terminal as administrator. Click on Start then begin typing PowerShell.
Next, right-click Windows PowerShell app and choose to run as administrator.
When the console opens, run the commands below:
dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux /all /norestart
After installing, you should get a success message similar to the lines below:
Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool Version: 10.0.19041.844 Image Version: 10.0.19042.844 Enabling feature(s) [==========================100.0%==========================] The operation completed successfully.
Enable Virtual Machine Platform
WSL 2 requires Windows 10 Virtual Machine Platform to be enabled. This is not Hyper-V. To enable the VM platform feature in Windows, run the commands below from the same PowerShell administrator’s console.
dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:VirtualMachinePlatform /all /norestart
If you’re using Windows 10 version lower than 2004, then use the commands below:
Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName VirtualMachinePlatform -NoRestart
When you’re done running the commands above, restart your computer for all the configuration changes to apply. If you don’t restart, the below command might not be recognized.
After restarting your computer, login back in and launch PowerShell as administrator. Then run the commands below to configure WSL 2 as the default version of WSL.
wsl --set-default-version 2
Install Ubuntu in Windows 10
Now that WSL 2 is installed and ready to be used, open the link below to download and install a copy of Ubuntu 20.04 from Windows store.
Get Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – Microsoft Store
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS on Windows allows you to use Ubuntu Terminal and run Ubuntu command line utilities including bash, ssh, git, apt and many more.
Click the Get button and install. After installing Ubuntu, you’ll want the option to launch Ubuntu from Windows WSL environment.
After launching Ubuntu, it should install and prompt to create your account.
Installing, this may take a few minutes.
Please create a default UNIX user account. The username does not need to match your Windows username.
For more information visit:
Enter new UNIX username: richard
New password:
Retype new password:
passwd: password updated successfully
Installation successful!
To run a command as administrator (user "root"), use "sudo <command>".
See "man sudo_root" for details.
Welcome to Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS (GNU/Linux 4.4.0-19041-Microsoft x86_64)
* Documentation:
* Management:
* Support:
System information as of Mon Apr 12 17:57:37 CDT 2021
System load: 0.52 Processes: 7
Usage of /home: unknown Users logged in: 0
Memory usage: 26% IPv4 address for eth0: 10.0.2.15
Swap usage: 0%
1 update can be installed immediately.
0 of these updates are security updates.
To see these additional updates run: apt list --upgradable
That should do it!
Some troubleshooting commands to run when you run into issues above. These run below and try to launch Ubuntu image again.
wsl --set-default-version 1 bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype auto start
Now that Windows 10 WSL environment is ready, continue below to install Apache, MariaDB, PHP and configure PrestaShop to run.
Install Apache HTTP Server
Apache is the most popular open source web server powering majority of the websites online. Since PrestaShop needs it, use the commands below to install it on Ubuntu.
To install Apache on Ubuntu, run the commands below:
sudo apt update sudo apt install apache2
After installing Apache2, the commands below can be used to stop, start and restart Apache2 services.
sudo service apache2 stop sudo service apache2 start sudo service apache2 restart
To validate that Apache is installed and functioning, open your web browser and browse to the server’s hostname or IP address.
You should get a test page if every works.
Install MariaDB Database Server
For this tutorial, we’re going to be installing MariaDB. PrestaShop needs a database server to store its content.
MariaDB is a true open source database server you can run with your projects. It is fast, secure and the default server for almost all Linux.
To install MariaDB, run the commands below:
sudo apt-get install mariadb-server mariadb-client
After installing MariaDB, the commands below can be used to stop, start and restart MariaDB services.
sudo service mysql stop sudo service mysql start sudo service mysql restart
Next, run the commands below to secure the database server with a root password if you were not prompted to do so during the installation.
sudo mysql_secure_installation
When prompted, answer the questions below by following the guide.
- Enter current password for root (enter for none): Just press the Enter
- Set root password? [Y/n]: Y
- New password: Enter password
- Re-enter new password: Repeat password
- Remove anonymous users? [Y/n]: Y
- Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n]: Y
- Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n]: Y
- Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n]: Y
To verify and validate that MariaDB is installed and working, login to the database console using the commands below:
sudo mysql -u root -p
Type the root password when prompted.
Welcome to the MariaDB monitor. Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MariaDB connection id is 46
Server version: 10.3.29-MariaDB-0ubuntu0.20.04.1 Ubuntu 20.04
Copyright (c) 2000, 2018, Oracle, MariaDB Corporation Ab and others.
Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.
MariaDB [(none)]>
If you see a similar screen as shown above, then the server was successfully installed.
PHP and Related Modules
PHP is a general-purpose scripting language the glues all the above components together. PrestaShop is a PHP application and requires PHP and related modules to function.
To install PHP and recommended modules, run the commands below.
sudo apt install php libapache2-mod-php php-imagick php-imap php-json php-ldap php-common php-pgsql php-ssh2 php-sqlite3 php-xml php-mysql php-gmp php-curl php-intl php7.4-mbstring php-xmlrpc php-gd php-xml php-cli php-zip
That should get PHP installed with recommended PHP modules that you can run with many PHP based applications.
To validate that PHP is installed, run the commands below:
php -v
You should see an output like the one below:
PHP 7.4.3 (cli) (built: Oct 6 2020 15:47:56) ( NTS ) Copyright (c) The PHP Group Zend Engine v3.4.0, Copyright (c) Zend Technologies with Zend OPcache v7.4.3, Copyright (c), by Zend Technologies
You can also test with a test php script and displays installed version as well as related modules that are enabled or disabled.
To do that, run the commands below to create a php test file called phpinfo.php
sudo nano /var/www/html/phpinfo.php
Then type the content below and save the file.
<?php phpinfo( ); ?>
Save the file.
Open your browser and browse to your server hostname followed by phpinfo.php
Restart Apache, then type the address and browse to the file.
You should see PHP default test page.
At this stage, all required components that PrestaShop needs are installed above. Continue below to downloading and configuring PrestaShop settings.
Create PrestaShop Database
Now that you’ve installed all the packages that are required for PrestaShop to function, continue below to start configuring the servers. First run the commands below to create a blank PrestaShop database.
To logon to MariaDB database server, run the commands below.
sudo mysql -u root -p
Then create a database called prestashop
CREATE DATABASE prestashop;
Create a database user called prestashopuser with new password
CREATE USER 'prestashopuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'new_password_here';
Then grant the user full access to the database.
GRANT ALL ON prestashop.* TO 'prestashopuser'@'localhost' WITH GRANT OPTION;
Finally, save your changes and exit.
FLUSH PRIVILEGES; EXIT;
Download PrestaShop
Next, go and download the latest version of PrestaShop.
At the time of writing this article, the latest stable version of PrestaShop is version 1.7.7.4. Make sure to visit the PrestaShop download page and check if there is a new version of PrestaShop available.
wget -P /tmp unzip prestashop_1.7.7.4.zip sudo unzip /tmp/prestashop.zip -d /var/www/prestashop
Then run the commands below to set the correct permissions for PrestaShop to function.
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/prestashop/ sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/prestashop/
Configure PrestaShop Site
Finally, configure Apahce2 site configuration file for PrestaShop. This file will control how users access PrestaShop content. Run the commands below to create a new configuration file called prestashop.conf
sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/prestashop.conf
Then copy and paste the content below into the file and save it. Replace the highlighted line with your own domain name and directory root location.
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin [email protected]
DocumentRoot /var/www/prestashop
ServerName example.com
ServerAlias www.example.com
<Directory /var/www/prestashop/>
Options FollowSymlinks
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>
Save the file and exit.
After configuring the VirtualHost above, enable it by running the commands below, including other modules.
sudo a2ensite prestashop.conf sudo a2enmod rewrite
When you’re done, restart Apache
sudo service apache2 restart
Now browse to the server hostname or IP address and begin setting up PrestaShop platform.
This will bring up PrestaShop installation wizard. Follow it until you’re done.
Type in your store information and create an admin account, then continue.
Type in the database info and continue
After that, you store should be installed and ready to be configured and use. Login with the admin account created above and enjoy!
Conclusion:
This post showed you how to install PrestaShop in Windows WSL. If you find any error above, please use the comment form below to report.
