GUIDE · PRESTASHOP · E-COMMERCE

Speed up PrestaShop without breaking checkout

Putting a CDN in front of a store is scary for one concrete reason: cache too much and one customer can see another customer’s cart. The answer is not to give up on caching — it is to split correctly what gets cached and what passes through. Here is how that split works for PrestaShop on Paradarum.

The golden rule: what to cache and what not to

A store mixes two kinds of content with opposite needs:

Content	Cache	Why
Images, CSS, JS, fonts	long TTL	Identical for every visitor; the bulk of page weight.
Product and category pages	short TTL	Cacheable for anonymous visitors; purged when the catalog changes.
Cart, checkout, my account	bypass	Session-dependent: caching them mixes users. Never.
Back office (admin)	bypass	Private by definition.

None of this requires touching your server: on Paradarum, cache rules are defined per path on the property — Equals, Contains, StartsWith, EndsWith or Regex — and decide TTLs and headers from the edge.

The PrestaShop preset: the rules done, in one click

You do not have to write that split by hand. In the panel, open the property, go to General settings and expand the Quick Setup card: the dropdown’s E-commerce category includes the PrestaShop preset. Applying it creates individual, editable cache rules — static assets on a long TTL, pages on a moderate one, and the cart, checkout and account routes on bypass — and applies a set of recommended general settings (Always Online, query-string handling, browser caching and protection headers).

Every rule the preset creates carries the description “Applied from PrestaShop preset” and can be fine-tuned afterwards: raise a TTL, adjust a pattern, add a route.

do not apply it twice

Applying a preset always creates new rules — it never replaces existing ones. Applying it twice leaves you a duplicate set. To undo it, delete the individual rules — the “Applied from …” description gives them away.

Two settings that prevent surprises

1. The renamed admin folder

PrestaShop randomizes the admin folder name for security (/admin123xyz instead of /admin). The preset’s rules assume the default path: edit the admin never-cache rule so it matches your real folder. One minute, and it keeps your back office out of the cache.

2. The session cookies

The preset ships a recommended list of cache-bypass cookies, but by design it is not applied automatically: you decide whether logged-in users skip the cache. Add your shop’s session cookies to the page rule’s Location Features and every identified visitor gets fresh content from your origin, while anonymous traffic keeps being served from the edge.

Automatic purging: the official module

A store cache is only useful if it invalidates itself when the catalog changes. That is the job of Paradarum CDN Purge, the official module for PrestaShop 1.7 through 8.x: it hooks into the object lifecycle and purges the affected routes whenever products, categories, CMS pages, manufacturers or suppliers are added, updated or deleted. A product change can purge its page, its categories and the home page, depending on your include settings.

In the back office, go to Modules → Module Manager → Upload a module and upload the module zip (download in the documentation).
Click Configure and fill in the API key (pdm_…, stored encrypted) and the Property ID of the property serving the shop.
Leave Auto purge on. The default hybrid strategy balances precision and reach; if a single change would touch more than 30 routes, the module collapses it into one full-property purge.

One extra the store will appreciate

Product images are converted to WebP automatically at the edge, downscaled to configurable maximums — and only for browsers that accept it. Nothing to install in PrestaShop: it is enabled on the property.

Try it with your store

Create the property, apply the PrestaShop preset and install the purge module. The Seed plan includes 50 GB a month with WAF and TLS, no card required.

Create free account

No card · 50 GB/month on the Seed plan