Joomla! E-Commercewith VirtueMart By Suhreed Sarkar

Joomla! E-Commerce with VirtueMart By Suhreed Sarkar. Netshine Rating: 9/10 In Short: This book is an extremely thorough, clear, and practical guide to setting up an online shop using Joomla and Virtuemart. In detail: Read full review Netshine Review: Having written part of the official documentation for Virtuemart myself (back when it was known as Mambo-phpShop), I was interested to see how this book would deal with the challenge of explaining one of the most complicated components ever written for Joomla! I'm guessing that English is not the author's first language, not only by the name, but also because there are few slightly odd phrases and orthographical errors, but even so, the style is clear and easily understandable. The book starts off with a roundup of alternative e-commerce components (including nBill!) and provides a brief introduction to what Joomla is, what VirtueMart is, and how they fit together, as well as an overview of features (nicely done without labouring the point), thus setting the scene for where VirtueMart is positioned in the grand scheme of things. We then get a basic, but fairly comprehensive tutorial on installing, configuring, and using Joomla itself. I would think most readers would already be familiar with this, but it is a thoughtful gesture for those who are completely new to Joomla, and is an indication of the thoroughness manifest throughout the book. The features of Virtuemart are covered exhaustively, and whilst there is some repetition (which is hard to avoid), the style is generally clear and coherent, without too much waffle - even so, at over 400 pages, the coverage is quite comprehensive. Whilst not particularly difficult (once you understand how it works), one of the less intuitive aspects of Virtuemart (in my opinion) is that of setting up product attributes, as well as parent-child product associations. The explanations given in the book, are clear and helpful, with real-life examples showing how to add attributes and properties such as size and colour, as well as custom attributes (for personalised products) and parent-child relationships. These concepts are covered in such a way that they not only show you how to set things up, but also convey an understanding of the reason why the features are there and how they differ from one another, thus enabling you to choose the right configuration for your needs (for example, depending on what kind of stock control information you need to track). Chapter 7 goes beyond Virtuemart itself, and explains how to install and configure 2 newsletter components (Acajoom and Vemod), and Chapter 8 deals with localization including the Translation Manger component. The final chapters deal with writing extensions, maintenance and troubleshooting (again using more 3rd party components), and apendices for dealing with specific shipping providers, payment modules, and useful resources. All in all, this is a well-planned, thorough, and easy-to-understand guide to setting up and maintaining an e-commerce site using Joomla and Virtuemart.

Here is another review of my book ' Joomla! e-commerce with VirtueMart'.

May 06

Joomla! E-Commerce with VirtueMart E-book Add comments

VirtueMart is a widely used component for adding e-commerce to a Joomla! site. VirtueMart covers all the aspects of e-commerce in an easy-to-use fashion and allows administrators to configure the various factors such as those of the shop, selling workflow, payment, products, and more. It also has many other features, which include managing customers and orders, so that every aspect of the shop is handled on-line for your comfort.

This book demonstrates the setting up of an on-line Joomla! e-commerce site from scratch using VirtueMart. It focuses specifically on e-commerce and VirtueMart. It teaches all the aspects of quickly setting up a feature-packed, easy-to-build e-commerce site–from basic installation and configuration of Joomla and VirtueMart through adding features step-by-step to an example web site to deployment.

The book begins with an introduction to VirtueMart with an explanation of its capabilities and how you can use it to earn money from your Joomla! site. This is followed by the necessary installation and configuration of Joomla! and VirtueMart to enable you to lay the foundation of your web site. Then it explains configuration of the VirtueMart store, which includes payment and shipping methods, configuring zones, and currencies.

The book then looks at managing products, customers, and orders, and customizing the web site appearance, all through demonstration so that you can build your own store with minimum effort, investment, and time. It also illustrates the promotion and public-relations factors such as banner ads, featured products, coupons, and more, so that you can build a wide customer base. It follows this up with examples of more advanced features such as localization and using extensions for bulk import/export of products to your VirtueMart shop, to suit your individual store needs. Maintenance, troubleshooting, and security, which are essential for running your site, are also explained. There is also an Appendix provided for configuring shipping and payment modules.

Another review of my book.

I've had the chance to read Packt Publishing's Joomla! E-Commerce with VirtueMart by Suhreed Sarkar and as a complete "how to" for Joomla and VirtueMart it's perfect.

It really does contain all you need to get up and running a full e-commerce site using these components.

It has to be admitted that for a newbie, after the installation of VirtueMart, it's all very daunting!
The documentation is available from VirueMart but it does assume rather a lot for a beginner.

Packt Publishing's new title though really sets out a complete step-by-step guide from installing Joomla through to going live with your e-commerce site.
And it doesn't only roll through the steps needed to get up and running.
Included for example are some small hacks to enable a different user group with different function permissions.

And a good run-down on available extensions for Search Engine Friendly Url's, Bulk imports of products, bookmarking modules etc.

There are chapters on template customising and a very valuable resource "which template displays what content", always a problem with VirtueMart, knowing where to change a file to customise a view.

The various VirtueMart modules (description, installation and configuration) are covered and a large appendix describing the payment and shipping modules.

Finishing off with a comprehensive resources appendix the book covers it all and can be recommended for those starting out in the Joomla / VirtueMart world.

It's available in print or as a discounted price PDF download, if you want a good basic grounding in building an e-commerce site with VirtueMart, this is it.
For webmasters this should be the book to recommend to their shop owner clients when their "how do I" questions become one too many.

Get it from Packt Publishing who have a huge range of specialist IT and Technology publications.
The direct link is Joomla! E-Commerce with VirtueMart
Enjoy.

Another review of my book at gcwebdesign.com. Hope this review helps others.

Build an Online Store with Joomla E-Commerce and VirtueMart

Submitted by Neha Shaikh on April 22, 2009 - 9:05pm

• book
• ecommerce
• joomla
• Joomlapack
• localization
• packt publishing
• shopping cart
• themes
• virtuemart

Joomla! E-Commerce with VirtueMart is a new book from Packt that helps users to build their own Joomla VirtueMart e-commerce web site with Joomla! 1.0/1.5 and VirtueMart 1.1.x. Written by Suhreed Sarkar, this book guides users through installing and configuring a VirtueMart store using the Joomla CMS platform.

Readers will learn to configure their stores with the most essential shop functionality such as creating and using the appropriate zones and currencies, configure payment methods, shipping methods, and taxes. In addition to this, users will be able to manage manufacturers, vendors, products, and product categories.

Developers will be able to customize the appearance of the website by installing and configuring VirtueMart themes, managing products, orders, and using search engine friendly (SEF) URLs, thus helping them in attracting customers to their store. Along with this, they will be shown how to build a wide customer base by learning about VirtueMart’s promotional tools such as banner ads, featured products, newsletters, coupons, etc.

By using region-specific taxes, multiple currencies, installing new languages, and translating the language of the site, users will be able to add further value to their store. To broaden VirtueMart functions for bulk import/export of products to the shop catalog, users will learn to add third-party extensions to their website. They will be able to spice up their shop by updating multiple product information on the shops website, and displaying sideshows with product images at the same time.

Along with installing, setting up and customizing a brand new VirtueMart store, developers will learn to secure, maintain and troubleshoot it by backing up and restoring files and databases of the store to the server.

Joomla! users interested in building an e-commerce store will find this book useful. This book is out now and is available from Packt. For more information, please visit: http://www.packtpub.com/joomla-e-commerce-with-virtuemart-1-1-x/book

Review of my book at CMSReport.com. Although not comprehensive, this review wanted to highlight some of the features of my book.

This my new book's cover. View details about the book at http://www.packtpub.com/joomla-e-commerce-with-virtuemart-1-1-x/book.>