If you want to have a news site and an online store in the same place, there is a solution for you. With Joomla eCommerce Edition, which contains the VirtueMart shopping cart, you will be able to construct a powerful professional online shop, while you still can publish your news articles using the same MySQL database, front-end and back-end.

The installation is the same as in case of Joomla standalone installation. You can manage your online store from the Control Panel, available inside Joomla general administration panel.

The VirtueMart Control Panel has an easy-to-use and intuitive (for newbies) web interface. First, you must define product categories, then you must add new products to the appropriate category. When you edit the product detail, you must provide product images, related products, discount type and more. You should try to fill in all fields with corresponding information, because the front-end appearance will depend on that. Try to provide an accurate description for all products, as well as for your store, and be specific in order to target the intended audience.

From the Payment Method List you should select - besides the default payment methods - 2Checkout as a method of payment. If you do not want to use cash payments, you must disable Purchase Order and Cash on delivery. You must pay attention to the shipping method configuration also, because the product's final price will include the shipping too. You must configure and establish the terms of services which are needed for the customer registration form.

It is recommended to change the default template with a more appropriate one for an online store. You can enhance the impact of your products by writing news articles and reviews in the news section of your Joomla website with links to specific products in virtual store. There are many other features that you should change or test, but this introduction is meant to show you that open source or free shopping carts exists, are easy to customize in order to fit your website design and are fully featured.

VirtueMart shopping cart is very flexible and customizable. The association of an online store with a news content manager is going to have good results for your marketing campaigns, because every part of your website represents an equal attraction point for your site visitors.