Pulse: Campaign Theme for PrestaShop

Overview

Pulse is the Kavio Labs campaign theme for PrestaShop 8.2 and 9.x, the same design as Pulse for CS-Cart, OpenCart and WooCommerce. It turns a store into a sale that is always on: a flash bar with a real countdown, a bento hero with a deal tile, a dark flash deals zone, round discount stickers, story circles and a Discover feed with promo cells between the products. Every countdown runs to the real end date of a PrestaShop specific price. Pulse is a child theme of Classic with a companion module ("Pulse theme settings"): no core changes, no overrides.

What you get

• Flash bar: the dark bar above the header counts down to the running discount that ends first (or your own date), with the campaign name and a link. Without a running discount it shows your message.
• Header and pill bar: round search with live suggestions, account, wish list, compare, a cart button with the total and a mini cart panel that updates without a reload; a category pill bar with floating panels (sub-categories, popular products or a banner), a "More" panel, a Deals pill; a drawer and a floating tab bar on phones.
• Home sections in any order, each on all devices, desktop and tablet only or phones only: bento hero (slider, deal of the day tile, two tiles), category squircles, flash deals zone, story circles with a 9:16 player, Discover feed with promo cells, pill-tab shelves, promo cards, counters, video articles, chat-bubble reviews, brand strip and trust strip.
• Product cards: hover picture, tilted discount sticker, flags, brand with the rating, colour dots, a round cart button that adds in one tap, deal timer and low-stock meter.
• Category pages: dark category band, sub-category pills, the Faceted search filters with chips, promo cells in the grid, density switch, Show more or loading while scrolling, a filter sheet and a Filter and Sort bar on phones.
• Product page: gallery with a big sticker and flash deal flag, saving next to the price, campaign strip with the countdown and the price after the deal, colour chips, stock meter, delivery dates, tabs with the reviews, perks strip, related and recently viewed products and a sticky phone buy bar with the deal timer.
• Sixteen colour schemes (fourteen light, two dark) and a colour editor for six colours of your own. Text colours are corrected automatically until they are easy to read.
• One-click demo: the Brightloop store with 32 products installs and removes from the settings page.
• Restyled cart, checkout (including the 9.2 one-page checkout), account pages and a compare page.

Guides

Installation

Requirements

• PrestaShop 8.2.x or 9.x with the Classic theme present (it ships with PrestaShop; do not delete it, Pulse is its child theme).
• PHP 7.2.5 or newer (the PHP version your PrestaShop already runs on is fine).
• Recommended modules (all ship with PrestaShop): Faceted search (filters), Wishlist (blockwishlist), Product Comments (ratings and reviews), Newsletter subscription (promo card), Link list (footer columns).

Install the theme

1. Go to Design > Theme & Logo and click Add new theme.
2. Choose Import from your computer, upload kvpulse-1.0.0.zip and click Next. PrestaShop unpacks the theme into themes/kvpulse and the companion module Pulse theme settings into modules/kvpulse.
3. Click Use this theme next to Pulse. PrestaShop installs and enables the companion module, applies the image sizes and puts the modules in the Pulse positions (listed in the theme's config/theme.yml).
4. Go to Design > Image Settings and click Regenerate thumbnails so your product pictures get the new sizes (600 x 600 cards, 1000 x 1000 product page).
5. Go to Advanced Parameters > Performance and click Clear cache.

Licence key

Pulse works for 14 days without a key. Open Modules > Module Manager > Pulse theme settings > Configure, open the Licence tab, paste the key from your Kavio Labs account and click Save key. The licence is checked from this page (and once a day), never on a storefront request. Without a valid key the storefront keeps working with the Berry scheme; the home sections, the menus, live search, compare and the other extras are switched off until the key is valid. Your settings are kept. (The PrestaShop Addons edition has no licence key and makes no outbound calls.)

One-click demo

On a fresh store, open the Demo tab of the settings page and click Install the demo. It adds the Brightloop store: 32 products with pictures and discounts, categories, brands, reviews, pages and every Pulse setting of the demo. It takes up to about two minutes.

While the demo is installed your other active products, top categories and brands are hidden and the stock home modules are unhooked. Remove the demo deletes everything it added and brings back what it hid, your settings included. Uninstalling the module removes the demo too. Do not edit real orders or customers around demo products that you want to keep: the demo is meant for trying the theme.

First steps

1. Scheme and colours. On the Design tab pick one of the sixteen schemes and set your own colours if you like. The preview follows while you choose. Add a text logo, or keep your logo picture.
2. A sale with an end date. Create a specific price or a catalogue price rule with an end date: the flash bar, the deal tile, the flash deals zone, the cards and the product page count down to it.
3. Pill bar. On the Header & menu tab choose the categories (empty = the sub-categories of Home) and give them shorter names, phone menu icons or a banner for the floating panel.
4. Category pictures. Give your top categories a picture (Catalog > Categories): it appears in the squircles, the pills, the phone menu and the dark category band. Cut-out pictures on a transparent background sit directly on the band; a normal JPG gets a light plate.
5. Home page. Fill the slides, tiles, stories and promo cards on the Home page tab. In the list editors, use the Pictures tab to upload a picture and copy its path.
6. Product facts. Add a product feature named Ships in with values such as "Ships in 1-2 days" (the buy box turns it into delivery dates) and, for a product video, a feature named Video with a YouTube, Vimeo or .mp4 / .webm link.

Image sizes

Pulse sets these image types: home_default 600 x 600 (cards), large_default 1000 x 1000 (product page), medium_default 452 x 452, small_default 98 x 98, cart_default 125 x 125 and category_default 600 x 600. Product pictures on a white or transparent background look best: the cards and the gallery blend them into the soft picture well.

Uninstall

Switch to another theme in Design > Theme & Logo, then delete Pulse there. Uninstalling the module Pulse theme settings removes its settings and the demo, if it is installed; your own products, categories and pictures are not touched.

Configuration

Open Modules > Module Manager > Pulse theme settings > Configure.

Design

• Colour scheme: Berry, Cobalt, Tangerine, Lime, Mint, Lemon, Grape, Coral, Sky, Jade, Flame, Bubblegum, Teal, Graphite and the dark schemes Ink and Neon.
• Your colours: buttons, links, dark band, page background, pop colour, sale prices. Empty keeps the colour of the scheme. A dark page colour switches the store to dark surfaces.
• Text logo, Animations.

Header & menu

• Flash bar: sticker, campaign name, end date (empty = the discount that ends first), link text and link, and the message shown when no discount with an end date is running.
• Service links, opening hours, phone, sticky header, search placeholder, live search.
• Pill bar: categories, number of pills, Deals pill, extra pill and a list with a shorter name, a phone menu icon and a panel banner per category.

Home page

Section order is a comma list: hero, bubbles, flash, stories, feed, tabs, promos, counters, videos, reviews, brands, trust. Every section has Show and Show on (all devices, desktop and tablet only, phones only).

• Bento hero: slides (label, title, text, scene for desktop and phone, two buttons, sticker, countdown), tiles and the deal of the day tile (empty product = the running discount with the biggest saving).
• Countdown fields accept a date (2026-12-24 or 2026-12-24 18:00), p:<product id> for the end of that product's specific price, or auto for the discount that ends first.
• Titles: *word* highlights a word, | breaks the line.
• Flash deals zone: label, title, products (empty = running discounts with an end date), button.
• Story circles, Discover feed, Pill-tab shelves, Promo cards, Counters, Video articles, Chat-bubble reviews (empty = the latest approved product comments), Brand strip, Trust strip. Write only real figures and real customer quotes.

Category pages

Sub-category pills, pagination (Show more, load while scrolling or page numbers), products per row, the Filter and Sort bar of phones and the Promo cells: a promo, video or article cell at a position of the Discover feed or of the category grids, one or two cells wide. A cell with a date hides itself after that date.

Product cards: brand line, hover picture, colour dots, quick view, compare, add to cart in one tap, deal countdowns, round discount sticker, New flag, Top rated flag and the low-stock quantity.

Product pages

Highlights, hover zoom, sticky phone buy bar, the Video and Delivery time feature names, the in-stock line, payment chips, perks strip, frequently bought together and the title of the related products.

Footer & mobile

Promo card (it holds the Newsletter subscription form, or a button to the registration without that module), about text, help line, payment chips, social links, phone tab bar and back to top.

Demo

Install the demo adds the Brightloop store; Remove the demo takes it out again. See Installation.

Pictures

Upload a picture for the list editors and copy its path into the image column.

Using Pulse

Running a campaign

1. Create the discount as a specific price (product page, Pricing) or a catalogue price rule, with an end date.
2. Put the campaign name in Header & menu > Flash bar and link it to the category of the sale.
3. Add the products to Home page > Flash deals zone, or leave the list empty: it takes the discounts that end first.
4. Point the sticker and countdown of a slide or a promo cell at the same sale with p:<product id>.

Pulse shows the end date exactly as it is stored in the specific price, in the time zone of the shop, and adds nothing to it. When a countdown reaches zero it hides itself. PrestaShop compares the end with the current minute, so the price itself goes back within a minute of the end.

Products without an end date keep their sticker and sale price but show no timer: Pulse never invents a deadline.

Category pages

The dark band shows the category name, description and picture. Cut-out pictures sit directly on the band; a normal JPG with its white or photo background gets a light plate. The filters come from the Faceted search module. On phones they open in a sheet from the Filter button.

Promo cells

Add a row in Category pages > Promo cells and choose Discover feed or Category grids, the position and the size. In category grids, an empty category list shows the cell on every category page. Cells appear on the first page of a listing. A video cell plays in a dialog; an article cell opens a CMS page in a dialog.

Phones

Rows swipe sideways, the tab bar floats over the page and the buy bar with the deal timer appears when Add to cart scrolls out of view.

Wish list, compare, recently viewed

The wish list is the PrestaShop Wishlist module. Compare keeps up to four products in the browser. Recently viewed uses a short id list in the PrestaShop cookie, the way the Viewed products module does.

Developer notes

• Structure: theme themes/kvpulse (child of Classic, config/theme.yml) and module modules/kvpulse (composer psr-4 autoload of KavioLabs\Module\Pulse\ in src/, demo pack in demo/).
• Settings: one JSON configuration value KVPULSE_SETTINGS per shop context; list settings are arrays inside it. The demo records everything it does in KVPULSE_DEMO_STATE.
• Colours: the module prints the scheme as CSS custom properties (--pu-acc, --pu-band, --pu-sec, soft tones --pu-t1 to --pu-t6 ...) in a <style id="pu-colors"> element of the page head (displayHeader); the html element carries data-pu-scheme, data-pu (still) and data-pu-dark. Override any token in your own CSS.
• Smarty variables: $kvpu (menus, icons, flags, texts, flash bar, promo cells, category art, product page data) is assigned in actionFrontControllerSetVariables; presented products get pu_img2, pu_end, pu_left, pu_off, pu_opts, pu_low, pu_meter, pu_rate, pu_rates and pu_top (actionPresentProduct / actionPresentProductListing).
• Countdowns: pu_end is the to value of the specific price of the presented product, read in the shop time zone, nothing added. Markup: data-pu-end (unix time) and data-pu-left (seconds, for static snapshots).
• Hooks of the module: displayHeader, actionFrontControllerSetMedia, actionFrontControllerSetVariables, actionPresentProduct, actionPresentProductListing, displayWrapperTop (home sections), displayPulseFbt (frequently bought together), category and product save hooks (menu cache in var/cache/<env>/kvpulse/).
• Theme hooks: displayPulseMenu holds ps_mainmenu (shown only without the companion module); displayPulseFbt sits under the tabs; the Product Comments part of displayFooterProduct is rendered in the Reviews tab, the other modules of that hook under the tabs.
• Front controllers: module/kvpulse/search (live search JSON), module/kvpulse/compare (comparison page; the list lives in the browser), module/kvpulse/article (CMS page JSON for the dialogs).
• JavaScript: assets/js/pulse.js runs on top of the Classic theme.js and core.js and listens to the core events (updateCart, updatedProduct, updateProductList); it sets prestashop.blockcart.showModal (the extension point of ps_shoppingcart) to a toast. Settings in window.kvpulse.
• Templates overridden in the theme: header, footer, layout, product miniature, product list, list bar, active filters, category header and listing, product page, prices, flags, gallery, variants, add to cart, checkout header, and the module templates of the Customer sign-in, Shopping cart, Faceted search (active filters), Newsletter subscription and the 9.2 one-page checkout.

FAQ

Does Pulse change PrestaShop core files or use overrides?

No. It is a child theme of Classic with a companion module that uses hooks only.

Which PrestaShop versions are supported?

PrestaShop 8.2.x and 9.x (tested on 8.2.8 and 9.2.0), including the 9.2 one-page checkout. Hummingbird is not needed: Pulse builds on Classic, which ships with both versions.

The countdowns do not show. Countdowns need a discount with an end date (a specific price or a catalogue price rule). Pulse never shows a timer without a real end date.

The sale ended but the price still shows for a moment. PrestaShop compares the end date with the current minute, so the price goes back within a minute of the end. The timer itself stops at the stored end date.

My category picture looks like a white box in the dark band. It will not: a normal JPG gets a light plate. For the picture to sit directly on the band, use a cut-out PNG in the demo style, or hide the picture by removing it from the category.

My pill bar is empty. The pills are built from the sub-categories of Home (or the ids in Header & menu > Categories). Check that the categories are active, then clear the cache. Without the companion module the stock Main menu module is shown instead.

Can I hide a home section on phones?

Yes: every section has a "Show on" setting (all devices, desktop and tablet only, phones only).

Is the demo store included?

Yes. The Brightloop store with our own illustrations installs in one click from the Demo tab and removes in one click. It is fictional: replace its figures and quotes with your own real ones before you go live.

What happens when the licence expires?

Updates and support stop. With the own-site edition, a key that is no longer valid switches the extras off after the grace period; the storefront keeps working with the Berry scheme.