There are instances when you would like to have a "test" product in your catalog that is visible and available only to you and your administrators. Usually this is needed to test your own order processing flow. This short tutorial will show you how to create a test product in PrestaShop that is visible only to a group of people that you select.
Create a Customer Group for Administrators

First we need to create a Customer Group. We will assign this group to our administrators in a later step.
1) Click on The Customers tab
2) Click on the Groups sub-tab
3) Click on the Add new link
This takes us to the Customer Group creation screen

1) Let’s call the Customer Group ‘Administrators’. The name will allow us to easily identify it as a group that is meant for administrators.
2) Optionally, you can assign a Discount to this group. I am going to leave it at 0% because I will be creating a test product with $0.01 price and won’t need an additional discount for testing.
Assign users to the Administrators customer group

Next, edit the user that should have access to the new test subcategory
1) Assign the "Administrators" customer group to the user that you will use for testing
2) Click Save
Create ‘Administrators Test Category’

Next we need to create a special test category which will contain our test products.
This special category will be assigned to the ‘Administrators’ customer group we created above.
Hence the products in this categoy will only be visible to the users under the ‘Administrators’ category
1) Click on the Catalog tab
2) Click on ‘Add a new subcategory’ link
This takes us to the screen where we can create our new sub-category

1) Name the sub-category ‘Administrators est Category’
2) Important! Make sure only the checkbox for Administrators customer group is checked. This ensures that only the users in the Administrators customer group will see this sub-category and the products under it.
3) Click Save
Create a Test product under the Administrators Test Category

First Navigate to the newly created category by clicking ‘Catalogs’ tab and then clicking on the category ‘Administrators Test Category’ in the category list
1) Click on the ‘ Add a new product’ link.
This takes us to the screen where we can create a new test product
Create a Test Product

Create the product with your desired name and description
1) Set a price of 0.01 or some low value. This is not strictly necessary, but if you are going to make real purchases with this product then you may want to keep the cost low.
2) Important! Assign the product to the Administrators Test Category and make sure the checkboxes for all the other categories is unchecked. This ensures that this product will only be visible to the Administrators Groups and no one else!
Save the new product
That’s it.
Now, when you login with your test account you will see the newly created ‘Administrators Test Category’ in your front office estore. When you click on this category you will see the test product.
Your regular customers will not see this test category or the test product!
Do you have any other tricks you use for testing products in PrestaShop? Let us know in the comments below.
If you are still unsure on how to proceed or have any questions contact StressLessWeb. I will be happy to help you out.
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