How to Manage Virtuemart Components on Your Joomla Website

How to Use Virtuemart components - Virtuemart is a free shopping cart application available for Joomla and Mambot. Virtuemart is an open source e-commerce application that can be run as a shopping cart or in catalog mode. Virtuemart offers a wide array of features that can be used to manage an online store.

Virtuemart is written in PHP format so it is fully compatible to Joomla.

This tutorial will walk you through the process of using the various Virtuermart components. First, go to www.virtuemart.net and install the Virtuemart package, which is called VirtueMart_x.x_COMPLETE_PACKAGE.zip. This is the complete package of the shopping cart.

How to add categories to Virtuemart
Step #1
Now log-on to your Joomla administrator account and enter your Joomla store. Click Products and then Add Category on the drop-down menu.

Step #2
On the Add Products page, you go ahead and fill in your category information such as category name and category description.

Step #3
You then need to choose a parent category if you are adding a subcategory. Main categories act as the default parent categories.

Step #4
Finally, you can upload an image for the product if you so desire.

How to add a product to Virtuemart
Now that you know how to add categories, you can now add products to fit into those categories.

Step #1
On the Virtuemart administration page, you need to click Products and then Add Product.

Step #2
With this done, you can now add product information such as the SKU number, name of product, and product URL.

Step #3
After this, you can now choose a price for your product. In addition to the price, you can add a tax rate and discount rate if it applies to your product.

Step #4
You will also need to add a short description in the text field.

Step #5
Under the Product Status tab, you can determine whether the product is in stock, release date, and product attributes such as color.

Step #6
Under the Product Dimensions and Weight tab, you can indicate the product's length, width, height, and weight. You can also add an image to go accompany the product's description.

Step #7
Once you have entered all desired information, you need to click Save in save and publish your product.

How to add a payment method to Virtuemart
Virtuemart supports many payment methods such as credit card, PayPal, eCheck, NoChex, Paymate, and Worldpay. There are several modules to choose from, but I will explain the PayPal module because it is one of the most widely used payment methods.

Step #1
Click Store on the Virtuemart administration page. Select PayPal, and you will be redirected to an information page with many fields to fill out. Most of the fields are self-explanatory.

Step #2
If this is your first time using Virtuemart with PayPal you will want to enable the Test Mode before you complete an actual transaction.

Step #3
Finally, make sure you enter your PayPal address and fill out all necessary fields.

Step #4
Once the form is complete, you will be able to accept payments through PayPal!

How to Use Virtuemart as a catalogue
To use this great application in catalog mode rather than use the shopping cart,

Step #1
First, log-on to your Joomla administrator account and enter your Joomla store.

Step #2
Click Component and then Virtuemart on the drop-down menu.

Step #3
Now you will go to global configuration. Check the check box "Use only as catalogue" under the Global frame. Click Save.

Now you can use VirtueMart as a product catalog or an item catalog