The installation takes only a few minutes and happens entirely inside the Shopware administration – no programming required. If you already bought the plugin from the Shopware Store, the first part is even done for you.

Step by step in the administration

Log in to your Shopware administration (the admin area of your shop, usually at …/admin).
Open Extensions → My extensions in the menu on the left.
Look for Alt-Text Optimizer Pro in the list.
- If you bought the plugin from the Shopware Store, it appears here automatically. Click Install.
- If you received a .zip file from us, first click Upload extension at the top, pick the file and install it afterwards.
Once installed, flip the toggle next to the plugin to "on" to activate it.

That's it – the plugin is ready to use.

After activation you'll find the settings via the … menu (three dots) next to the plugin, under Configuration. You'll set up the OpenAI key it needs in the next step.

Where do I find the plugin after installing?

Alt-Text Optimizer Pro gets its own menu entry. You reach it in the administration under Content → Alt-Text Optimizer Pro. That is where you will generate your alt texts later. How exactly that works is covered in Generating alt texts.

What happens behind the scenes during installation

When installing, the plugin creates an invisible marker field (ai_alttext_generated). It lets Shopware remember which alt texts were created by the AI – so you can find, review or regenerate them all in one place later. Existing alt texts are left untouched.

Without a valid OpenAI key the plugin can't generate any alt texts yet. Set up your OpenAI API key next – it is the only step that needs a little one-off preparation.

For developers: installing via the console

You only need this section if you deploy the plugin from the command line on the server (for example as part of a deployment). It is not needed for normal operation.

Place the plugin in custom/plugins/VioveAltTextOptimizerPro (or install it via Composer) and run:

# Refresh the plugin list
bin/console plugin:refresh

# Install and activate the plugin
bin/console plugin:install --activate VioveAltTextOptimizerPro

# Clear the caches
bin/console cache:clear

So the administration picks up the new interface elements, rebuild the admin bundle afterwards:

bin/build-administration.sh