VirtueMart is a mature, extensive online shopping cart system that runs as an extension of the Joomla! CMS. It has a strong developer community, and it is well supported in the marketplace with a wide range of plugins. This presentation walks through the the process of building a Virtuemart 2 online shop, and VirtueMart's features set, strengths and weaknesses. This presentation has been updated for the Free Open Source Business Apps meetup group on 10 Oct 2013. The original version of the presentation was delivered to the Melbourne Joomla! User Group on 25 July 2012.

1. VirtueMart workshop
Russell Searle
Principal Consultant, Psicom
Melbourne Business Apps Group
Free Open SourceJoomla! User Group
27 10 October 2013
March 2013

2. Platform
• VirtueMart 2.x runs as a Joomla! 2.5.x extension
• VirtueMart won’t suit everybody:
• Do you need good content management features?
 Joomla! + VirtueMart is a good fit
• Do you want to combine your shop with other apps?
 Joomla! + VirtueMart + other business extensions
• Do you want a large shop and only minimal content?
 OpenCart or Magento may be better choices

3. Building a VirtueMart shopping cart #1
• Plan
• Business plan
• Market segment and offer
• Customers
• Suppliers
• Product range
• Pricing strategy
• Presentation
• Install
• Joomla! 2.5.x
• VirtueMart component
• ‘All-in-one’ plugins
package
• Basic configuration
• Countries and currencies
• Order status and rules
• Shop settings and
behaviour
• Templates and paths
• Price elements
• Checkout behaviour
• Product view content and
behaviour
• SEO settings
• Shopper custom fields
• Mail and forms

4. Building a VirtueMart shopping cart #2
• Manufacturers
• Products
• Brand categories
• Categories
• Brands
• Media files
• Vendor
• Products
• Vendors
• Stock
• Payment methods
• Price and tax rules
• Shipment methods
• Custom fields
• Shoppers
• Shopper groups
• Coupons
• Polish
• Templates and styling

5. VirtueMart 2.0 features #1
• Joomla 2.5 framework
• Template overwrites
• Plugins for payment,
shipment, coupons, pricing
rules etc.
• Integrate more extensions
• Categories
• Nested categories
• SEO meta tags
• Media tags
• Products
• SEO meta tags
• Short and long description
• Dimensions (weight, size)
• Media
• Variants and custom fields
• Unlimited child products
• Kit products
• Product patterns
• Related products
• Reviews and ratings

6. VirtueMart 2.0 features #2
• Shopper Groups
• Control pricing
• Control price display
• Control payment and shipping
• Shoppers
• Custom shopper fields for
registration, checkout and/or
shipment
• Anonymous checkout
• Billing and shipping
addresses
• Payment and shipment
methods
• Prices
• Price elements by shopper
group
• Select currency
• Coupons: promotion and gifts
• Multi-Currency
• Auto-update or fixed rates
• Foreign discounts/taxes
• Price/tax rules
• Discounts/taxes by date,
category, group, country,
state
• Discounts/taxes at product
and order levels

7. VirtueMart 2.0 features #3
• Product views
• Latest
• Top 10
• Newest
• Featured
• Can sort and search
• Stock
• Inventory levels
• Stock warning
• Available for pre-order
• Orders
• Pay/ship process
• History
• Update
• Anonymous orders
• Checkout
• Guest checkout
• Can override cart object in
templates
• One click checkout
• One page or multi-page
checkout
• SSL certificate support

8. VirtueMart 2.0 features #4
• Payments
• Implemented in plugins
• Min/max amounts
• Transaction fees by country,
group
• Paypal, COD, eurozone
gateways standard
• Third party eWay plugin
• Shipments
• Implemented in plugins
• Shipment method by shopper
group or country
• Shipping charge by weight,
post code, country, number of
items, order total
• Other
• Multilingual
• Tell a friend
• Debugger

9. Demo

10. Demo