How To Ensure That a Prestashop Module Is Not Harmful To Use?

Posted by Joe / July 24th, 2017 / No responses

In every development services for PrestaShop, developers always try to keep their modules and add-ons optimum and harmless. however, sometimes things get complicated when a user actually uses the module. It’s very important that you use a right module without any side-effect. A malicious PrestaShop module can have

A malicious PrestaShop module can have various negative impact on your site which may result in

• Instability
• Slowing down- back and front end
• Compromise in security

This article will help you to understand some popular categories of PrestaShop modules and would give an understanding of the ways to be cautious while choosing a module for your own store. Use these tips to avoid the harmful modules for your store.

The important tips to identify the harmful PrestaShop modules

Research about the module’s reputation

While not all the PrestaShop modules being sold online are malicious, some developers might miss the verification for the performance impact on the store. This negligence result in a feature loaded yet poorly designed PrestaShop module causing the above-mentioned issues on your store.

It’s very important to verify the module’s reputation before trying it on your live store. Do some research to find out what old users of the particular module have to say about it. Looking for the online reviews and testimonials is a brilliant idea for this.

Check if the module has got so much of negative reviews or has got no reviews at all. If so, you should be careful about it.

Research about reviews on multiple platforms

PrestaShop possesses a huge community of website owners and developers. There are so many PrestaShop forums and review sites. Spare some time and check if there are negative comments and reviews about the module on these platforms.

To make your search easy, you must use the following type of search terms:

Xyz module reviews

Xyz module issues

Xyz module complaints

Xyz module loading issues

Xyz module security issue etc.

Here “Xyz” in the name of the particular module you are researching about.

Check out the alternative modules

If you are not sure the particular module is safe to use, you can search and see other similar and alternative modules available. You can always find a similar kind of module being offered by different PrestaShop developers or a PrestaShop development company.

If the alternative solution is from a reputed developer with a better name in the market whom you can trust for support, performance, and security, you can go for it.

It’s good if the module is also on official PrestaShop marketplace

Official PrestaShop marketplace allows various reputed PrestaShop community developers to sell their modules on this reputed platform. PrestaShop modules and themes on this marketplace go through multiple checks and verification to check and ensure:

Uncompromising security

Better performance and

PrestaShop coding standard

You can trust the modules from this marketplace. However, some developers on the platform, also sell their modules on their own websites and other marketplaces as well. This is done to drive more sales through multi-channel selling by the developers.

For example, you can find the Knowband’s PrestaShop modules both on its official store and on the PrestaShop marketplace. Modules on both the platform are well tested, optimized and has gone through multiple checks.

If the module that you are looking at is also available on the PrestaShop official marketplace and has some good reviews, you can choose to trust it. However, you must still look out for the reviews and rating of the module to ensure seamless after-sales and support experience. Tally the reviews and rating on both- the store and the marketplace, you will have an idea if you can trust the developer.

Modules where you should be cautious about the performance

There are some specific types of modules which may create performance issues if they have not been designed properly. These modules carry out some crucial operations which directly impact on the server.

So, you should always check and verify these modules carefully before going for them.

Image manipulation modules

If you are using any such module which does the image manipulations like cropping, re-sizing etc, you should make sure that the module does not create more than the optimum load on the server.

These modules use the back-office image processing which generally generates quite a heavy load on the server. If you are using any image manipulation module, it’s better to feed them an optimum sized image for processing to ensure a lesser load. It’s much better if you can re-size the image on your local computer before uploading it to the server.

Modules showing Related Posts and Related Products

This category of modules is often used by the eCommerce websites to trigger better sales or content performance. Related posts, on the one hand, are used for blogging purposes, the Related products modules are used by the eCommerce stores to increase the average cart value.

To show the related posts or products, these modules generally use any of these two methods:

Recommended approach- Process the related products in batches and create a cached copy of the related products.Later use the cache copy to generate related products suggestions quickly.

Less recommended approach- Process and generate a new related products batch every time the page is loaded.

You should try to find out if the module uses the first or the second approach. Modules using the first approach of caching are recommended.

Backup and logging modules

Backup and logging modules are very crucial when it comes to the performance. These modules are actually one of the most required ones. Especially the site and database back modules.

The concern here lies with the storage space these modules use for keeping the backups or the logs. Most of them would store the backup file or database on the server itself.

Storing some data is not harmful depending on your storage size. However, these modules take continuous backups or logs which may result in a huge amount of storage load after some time on the server.

To handle this, some really effective modules use two approaches:

1. Overwriting- Instead of lining up all the backup files, they simply overwrite the latest backup on the old backup. This approach might somehow be good for storage problems, you will loose the older restore points though. So you must ensure if you want to keep just the latest backup or would also keep the old ones as restore points.

2. Cloud storage- The second approach is by allowing the module to store the backup on the could. Some modules can be configured to keep the backup files on multiple platforms to avoid the storage load on the server. However, you can choose to keep on both the server and the could if you wish to.

For example, the PrestaShop easy DB backup module allows the admin to take the backup of the database and keep the backup on the server as well as on the Google Drive or Dropbox could storage.

Such modules can be a good choice where you can also keep the older backup files and not overload the server at the same time.

Over to you

Practically you need modules and other PrestaShop developments to keep your store updated with the latest trends and requirements. No module is perfect in all the sections. Sometimes you have to compromise with some sections to get a prime feature. However, you must at least, never compromise with the performance and security factors. A slow loading module having security risk is never a wise choice. Use the modules and other PrestaShop development services from the reputed PrestaShop development companies only. At least these firms will give you an assurance of the security, performance, and better support.

Use the modules and other PrestaShop development services from the reputed PrestaShop development companies only. At least these firms will give you an assurance of the security, performance, and better support.