Joomla VirtueMart Quick User Guide

The following explainations are provided to help you manage your Joomla/VirtueMart shop.
A more detailed User Guide written for your particular shopping cart setup will be provided to you during your personal training session after your website has been designed. Or if you want it all, a full user guide can be found at: www.virtuemart.net

To Access your Joomla Admin Content Management System

Open the Administrator Page by typing in your web address and adding /administrator at the end of your domain name. eg www.mywebsite.com.au/administrator
Type in the Username and Password provided to you. You will be directed to the main Control Panel Screen where you will see links to various sections of the site. Be sure to bookmark this page or Add to Favorites before proceeding.

Your shopping Cart Admin / Control Panel

Make sure you're logged into your main Joomla admin site first ie www.mywebsite.com/administrator and then click on the menu item Components | VirtueMart

Managing, Adding, Deleting Products

To manage existing products in your shopping cart, from the Virtuemart menu click on Products | List Products. This will display a list of all your products in your site. If you have a large number of products in your site, you can filter the list by selecting a category from the dropdown box at the top of the list. Once you select a category, it will only show products located within that category. If more than 30 products exist in the category, you will see a menu at the bottom of the page where you can select to show more products or click through to the next group.

Editing an Existing Product

Find the product in the list that you want to edit, click it's name to open the product editor page. You will see 6 tabs that allow you to manage various aspects of this product.
EG Product Information, Display Options, Product Status, Product Dimensions and Weight, Product Images, Related Products.

The Product Information tab is the most important and most of the tabs and fields on this page are self explanatory such as price, description, SKU (ID). If your product has attributes like various colors, sizes and so on, then you would click on the tab labeled Product Status. Scroll down a little and you will see a text area field called Attribute List where you should enter the attribute information as needed.
Examples for the Attribute List Format:
Title = Color, Property = Red ; Click on New Property to add a new color: Green ; Then click on New attribute to add a new attribute, and so on.
Inline price adjustments for using the Advanced Attributes modification:
Price = +10 to add this amount to the configured price.
Price = -10 to subtract this amount from the configured price.
Price = 10 to set the product's price to this amount.

Once you have entered all the information for that product, click the Save button located in upper right corner of the page

Inserting a New Product

To insert a new product into your online shop, click Products | Add Product from the Virtuemart menu. A page will appear with the same 5 tabs described above that will allow you to specify all the product information. Be sure to select a PRODUCT CATEGORY on the first tab where you see the drop down for CATEGORIES.

Deleting an Existing Product

Find the product in the list that you want to delete, place a tick in the box to the left of this product. Click on the Delete button at the top right of the screen.

Shipping

We install custom shipping arrangements for every different client so we can not explain each here. Most of our clients use either the Standard Shipping module or the Australia Post module to configure their shipping charges.

To access these modules and configure shipping, from the Virtuemart menu click Store | Shipping Module List. This will display all the available shipping modules which you can click on to edit. The Australia Post module works directly with Australia Post and obtains shipping rates right from their website. You will need to set up an account with them in order to use this module. The Standard Shipping module can be used if you want to set up your own rates based on weight, price or other parameters. This is usually a cheaper option. We recommend using the Standard shipping module as default so you have full control over your shipping rates.

Order and Customer Information

Orders

Each order that is placed on your site is stored in your websites database. For security, the last 4 digits of the credit card are emailed to you and the rest of the numbers will have to be obtained through the VirtueMart Admin section.

To view orders and customer details, from the Virtuemart menu click Orders | List Orders. This will display all the orders placed on your site along with the customer's name. To view the details of an order, click on the Order Number, and to view details about the customer click on their Name. You can choose to leave all the orders in your database if you like. You will more then likely never exceed your memory usage. You can also choose to delete them for better organization. If you delete an order, the customer information is still retained in the system. Note also that there are options that allow you to communicate the status of the order to the customer such as (pending, shipped, cancelled and so on).

Users

When a customer places an order for the first time in VirtueMart they will be asked to create an account with a username and password. Each customers account details can be viewed and managed from the Admin | Users screen.

Other features

There are other features available in the VirtueMart shopping cart however most are either self explanatory or ones that your would never need to access.

If you need more detail to help you with managing your Joomla / VirtueMart site please refer to your personal User Manual which was provided to you when we designed your website or give us a call and we will happily point you in the right direction. Or you can check out the VIrtueMart website. www.virtuemart.net

Jen Blissett
Watermark Web Design
jen@wwd.com.au
Ph: 02 4955 2802

 

 

TOP