PrestaShop Bug Fixing: 12 questions answered.

Yes, this is a frequent request. After a 1.7 → 8 upgrade the back office can show white tabs, a missing menu, or dead AdminControllers because old overrides, a legacy theme, or incompatible modules didn’t survive the jump. We audit the upgrade, repair or remove the breaking overrides, update incompatible modules, clear the caches, and get admin fully usable again, ideally on a staging copy first.

It depends on scope, but the entry point is a Quick Fix at $99 (about 4 hours at $25/hr) for one well-defined bug with a known error string, one white page, one failing module, one Smarty error. A Bug-Fix Sprint at $499 (about 20 hours) covers a batch of bugs or one gnarly root-cause issue such as an override war or post-upgrade back-office breakage. High-revenue shops can take an Emergency Retainer for 24/7 on-call cover. Every quote is fixed-price, no hourly surprises.

A store-down emergency, a blank white page or a 500, can usually be triaged within minutes and resolved the same day. We target a first response under 4 hours during cover hours (faster on a retainer). The quickest path to a fix is to send the exact error string from var/logs/ and tell us what changed last: a module install, a theme edit, or a 1.7 → 8 upgrade.

Yes. Class 'AdminSomethingController' not found after a module update is almost always a half-deployed module, a stale class index, or a namespace mismatch. We finish or roll back the deploy, rebuild var/cache/prod/class_index.php, regenerate the cache, and confirm the back office and the module’s controllers load. If the module itself is broken, we patch it or pin a known-good version.

Yes. Every fix ships with a regression check across front office, back office and checkout, so the same module or override bug can’t silently come back. If our fix breaks something else, we fix that too at no extra charge. You also get a short written summary of what broke and why, plus a recommendation to stop it recurring, for example, moving override logic into a proper hook.

Yes, that’s the whole point of how we work. We diagnose in debug mode read-only first, take a full backup of files and the database before any change, and work on a staging copy wherever your host allows it. When a fix must go on live, we have a rollback ready. We never edit a live PrestaShop shop blind, and every change is verified before we call it done.

Yes, this is one of the most common PrestaShop bugs we see. When two modules both ship an override/ for the same class, you get The method ... is already overridden and one module silently loses. We map the full override chain, resolve the conflict (merge the overrides or move logic into a hook), delete the stale override/cache and var/cache/prod/class_index.php, and confirm both modules work together again.

Yes. Multistore bugs, the wrong theme, currency, language or URL showing for a given shop, usually come from a shop-context config saved at the wrong level (global vs group vs shop) or a module that ignores the shop context. We fix the per-shop configuration, check the URL/SSL domain mapping, and verify each storefront and its checkout render with the right settings.

Yes. When Stripe, PayPal, Mollie or a bank module never redirects, or returns to a broken order-confirmation, the cause is usually a failing validateOrder() call, a missing IPN/webhook return URL, or an SSL / base-URL mismatch between the gateway config and the shop. We trace the full payment hook flow, fix the return handling, and place real test orders so confirmations and order status update correctly.

Yes. Smarty: Syntax error in template or unknown tag usually comes from a deprecated {template} include, a missing {block}, or a stale compiled file in var/cache/prod/smarty/compile. We fix the offending .tpl, clear the Smarty compile cache, and verify every page that uses the template, product, category, checkout and CMS, renders correctly.

Staging first whenever it’s available, it’s the safest way to reproduce and fix a bug. If you don’t have a staging environment, we can clone one quickly, or, for a true emergency, work carefully on live with a backup and a rollback plan. Either way you keep selling: we schedule any risky step around your traffic and confirm the storefront stays up.

The PrestaShop white screen of death means a fatal PHP error is being swallowed because display_errors is off. We enable debug mode safely (set _PS_MODE_DEV_ or use the back-office advanced parameters), read the real fatal from var/logs/, and fix the root cause, a bad override, a missing class, a memory limit, or a corrupt var/cache. Then we turn debug mode back off and clear the cache so the live shop renders clean.