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Previous Article: 3. Joomla and E-Commerce [Part-2] (Membership Manager, Payment Option and Billing System
3.11. Auction System
I have discussed about Auction System in early chapters. So, in Joomla, there are a few components of making an auction site. It discusses in below.
Auction Factory: This is a complete auction system for Joomla. It can also be used with Joomla’s community builder component. This component supports all types of auctions, including proxy biddings. It has built-in support for multiple languages and SEF. Its user-friendly administrative interface provides easy tracking of auctions and bids.
3.12. Shopping Cart
For doing work in Joomla, you may get some shopping carts which performs tasks as an alternative of Virtue mart.
3.13. What is Virtue Mart?
Virtue mart is an open source e-commerce component. By this, you will be able to make product catalogue, configure payment and shipping method, manage customer’s orders, and also sell your product through the online system. We also see so many others shopping cart such as: OS commerce, ZenCart, Magento etc. The main difference in between virtue mart and these shopping carts (OS commerce, ZenCart, Magento) is that these types of shopping cart run separately but virtue mart cannot run without Joomla. Virtue mart totally integrated with Joomla. It runs as a Joomla component.
Like Joomla, virtue mart has developed with the help of PHP code and MySQL is used in back-end. Due to an open source anybody can download it and does work as a component of Joomla and Mambo. It is very important to mention that virtue mart was derived from the shopping cart named PHP Shop. PHP shop is a standalone shopping cart which in the beginning, the port of the PHP and MySQL base was mambo and got popularity as a Mambo PHP shop.
3.14. Features of Virtue mart
As a component of Joomla and Mambo, the all features of Virtue mart are very developed. Though Virtue mart was derived from a standalone shopping cart, but all the required features of making online shop are available here. Below, I am discussing some features.
3.15. General feature
As a component, virtue mart is totally integrated with Joomla and Mambo. It uses the security architecture of Joomla and has the power of using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption, until 128 bits. This type of encryption communicates with HTTPS. So, for this, it is very secure for the customers.
Another good feature of Virtue mart is that useful tax model. The sales tax of Virtue mart calculates as a ship to address, store address and EU mode. The tax of EU mode calculates as an owner address that is customers who come from EU countries.
Another advantage is that when a product sells from virtue mart shop then an order confirmation e-mail sends to the customers and owners. After that, the shop administration customizes the order confirmation mail and other mail sends to the customers.
3.16. Virtue Mart Localization
The Virtue Mart localization system is very nice. As a part of Joomla CMS you use different languages in Joomla sites and Virtue mart shop. When you configure and install Joomla Fish, then you use different languages in the store. Otherwise, so many different language packs you will get in virtue mart for using on Virtue Mart site. You can download it and use it very easily.
You can use various currencies along with various languages. For this, you get currency converter module which you use it after the configuration. By this, your customer can watch the value of his/her choice able products in his/her own currency.
Next Article: 3. Joomla and E-Commerce [Part-4] (Product Catalogue Feature, Payment Module & Shopping Module)
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