We will consider that you are still within the first hour following your installation of PrestaShop, in a single-shop instance.
Deactivating your shop means making sure that no one can access it while you are busy making changes, creating products, settings prices and taxes, installing payment modules and a new theme, setting carriers... This is called "putting your shop in maintenance mode".
In your back office, go the "Preferences / Maintenance" page. This page features two simple settings:
- Enable Shop. Simply set it to "No", and your front-end will display the maintenance page to your visitors, which simply states that your shop will soon be back online.
- Maintenance IP. This is where you must put your own IP address, so that you can still get access to your front page, and browse your shop as if it was available to all. This is a must-do every time you put your shop in maintenance mode, as you will always need to browse your front-end so as to make sure everything is in place as intended.
Simply click on the "Add my IP" button. You can add more IP addresses by separating them with commas.
If you have already decided what your theme and products are, you can simply put your shop in Catalog mode. This means that customers can browse your shop, but no price will be displayed, and they won't be able to add anything to their cart until you disable the Catalog mode.
You can activate the Catalog mode by going to the "Preferences / Products" page, where it is the first option.