After you have installed PrestaShop 1.6 manually, you will be ready to log into your site and begin creating your store. The admin area, often called the back office, is the section of your store your visitors are not able to see. From here you will be able to customize your store by adding modules, themes and products.

Note: You must have deleted the install folder before attempting to log in for the first time. If you have not, you will see an error message like telling you this must be done before gaining access to the admin area.

Step 1: The first thing you need to do is to navigate to your admin area. The URL for this will be the one for your main store, followed by “/admin”. For example, if your store is installed at “example.com” then you would visit “example.com/admin”. If you installed your store at “example.com/store” then you would visit “example.com/store/admin”. Once there you should see the login page.

Step 2: To log in, enter your admin email address and the password you created during the install. Once entered, click on the Log In button. You should be taken immediately to the first page of your administration dashboard. Make sure you take note of the admin URL in the address bar of your browser after logging in.

Note: Logging in after the first time: If you have manually installed PrestaShop and did not yet rename the admin folder, PrestaShop will rename the admin folder by adding a randomly generated number to the end of it, for example “admin8153″. From this point on, your admin URL will now include that number. Using the example given, you would now need to use URL “example.com/admin8153″ to gain access to the admin dashboard.