No, PrestaShop Isn’t Complicated. People Just Don’t Read the Documentation.
We’ve all heard this phrase in agencies or on forums: “PrestaShop is a mess, it’s full of bugs, nothing works as expected.”
I’ve said these words myself a few years ago. It’s a natural defense reaction. When code breaks, when a module crashes the checkout, it’s obviously the tool’s fault, right?
What if we’re blaming the wrong culprit?
Today, we’ll tackle a topic that stings a bit, but is essential for your evolution: PrestaShop development best practices. We’ll see why 80% of encountered problems don’t come from the CMS, but from how we use it.
Far from being a judgment, this article is an invitation to rediscover the technical richness of an often underestimated solution.
1. The Ikea Effect: Building Furniture Without Instructions
Imagine you buy a complex Ikea wardrobe. You’re handy, you toss the instructions aside and start screwing. At the end, you have three screws left, the door is crooked, and the furniture is unstable. Your conclusion? “Ikea is poor quality.”
This is exactly what happens with PrestaShop.
The Flexibility Trap
PrestaShop is permissive. Unlike very strict frameworks, PrestaShop (historically) allows you to do “dirty” things and it still works… apparently. You can modify a Core file directly. You can write a hard-coded SQL query in a TPL (please, don’t do that).
The CMS doesn’t punish you right away. It will punish you in 6 months, during an update, or on Black Friday.
What we perceive as “complexity” or “bugs” is often the result of technical debt accumulated by developers who didn’t take the time to read how the system wanted us to interact with it.
2. Documentation: The Hidden Treasure
There’s a persistent myth that PrestaShop documentation is poor. Maybe it was true in 2015. In 2025, it’s completely false.
The PrestaShop DevDocs has become an incredibly rich resource, supported by the Core team and the Open Source community.
What You’re Missing by Not Reading
By ignoring the documentation, we miss out on powerful tools that simplify life:
- Hooks: Rather than modifying code, learn to “hook into” events. It’s clean, it’s sustainable.
- Symfony Services: Since version 1.7 and especially 8, PrestaShop embraces Symfony. Did you know you could decorate existing services to cleanly alter their behavior?
- CQRS (Command Query Responsibility Segregation): A barbaric term for an ultra-clean architecture that separates data reading and writing. It’s documented, it’s powerful, but rarely used out of habit.
As we mentioned in our article on PrestaShop technical architecture, knowing your tool is the foundation of performance.
3. PrestaShop as a Skill Mirror
This is the most “counter-intuitive” aspect: PrestaShop is an excellent technical level indicator.
A junior developer will complain about the CMS because they don’t understand why their override broke everything. A senior developer will never touch overrides. They’ll create an independent module, use dependency injection, and follow PSR standards.
Becoming a “Better Developer” Thanks to PrestaShop
If you take the time to read the official documentation, you’ll realize that PrestaShop forces you to learn modern concepts:
- Composer for package management.
- Twig for the template engine.
- Doctrine for the database.
In reality, complaining about PrestaShop today often amounts to admitting you’re not quite comfortable with the modern PHP ecosystem. It’s hard to hear, but it’s also a tremendous opportunity for growth.
4. Three Golden Rules to Never Suffer PrestaShop Again
To finish with concrete advice, here’s how to transform your development experience (and your clients’):
- Rule #1: RTFM (Read The F*ing Manual)** Before coding a feature, spend 15 minutes on devdocs.prestashop-project.org. There’s a 90% chance that a native method already exists for what you want to do.
-
Rule #2: Don’t Touch the CoreIf you modify a file in
/classesor/controllerswithout going through a module or an override (and even then, overrides should be avoided), you’re creating a time bomb. -
Rule #3: Use What ExistsPrestaShop has thousands of helper functions (
Tools::,Validate::, etc.). Don’t reinvent the wheel. Using native methods ensures your code benefits from the CMS’s security patches.
Conclusion
PrestaShop doesn’t have a major technical problem; it has an image problem caused by years of “cowboy” development practices.
The platform is robust, modular, and with Symfony’s contribution, resolutely modern. The secret to unlocking this power doesn’t lie in a hack found on an obscure forum, but in the official documentation.
So, next time you’re stuck, before cursing the CMS, ask yourself: “Did I read the documentation for this component?” The answer (and solution) is often there.
Want to deepen your technical skills? Check out our tutorial on PrestaShop module development best practices to start on the right foot.
