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Amazon Shopping Cart is a package of Joomla extensions based around our AmazonWS plugin, that allows you to create a complete Amazon store on your Joomla website. Our AmazonWS content plugin has long been one of our most popular extensions: it allows you to embed product information from the Amazon Product Advertising API into your Joomla articles and other content, using the article metatags, or some simple embedding code. It can be used with any Joomla content that supports content plugins, for example K2 or Virtuemart, and is compatible with Joomla versions 2.5 and 3. The product information includes your affiliate links to Amazon: when a customer uses the link to visit the Amazon site and buy a product, you get paid.
The AmazonWS plugin can be used as a standalone plugin, and offers a simple yet powerful way to include Amazon affiliate links in your site. We think that this is the best way to integrate Amazon products into your Joomla site. The days are long gone when thin affiliate sites could rank well in Google: now Google demands unique content for your site to rank well, so using an content plugin is the natural way to embed Amazon affiliate links. However if you want your site to function more like an e-commerce store it can do this: you can make each Joomla article into a product, and use the plugin to add the product information.
However the AmazonWS plugin does have some limitations due to the fact that it is implemented as a content plugin: it cannot support multiple views, so all product links must lead directly to Amazon. The result is that it is difficult for customers to browse on your site for more than one item at a time.
The Amazon Shopping Cart package is designed to extend the AmazonWS plugin so that it offers a much more complete shopping experience. Customers will be able to browse on your site, search for products, and add them to their shopping cart, all on your own website. They only go to the Amazon site to check out and pay. Within the cart the customers can have multiple items, can modify the quantity, delete items, or save them for later. If they are logged into your site the cart can also be stored for up to 90 days: useful for people who want to go "window shopping" but are not ready to buy yet. The advantage for you is that customers may buy more stuff using your affiliate links, and the source of the purchase will be more directly traceable to your site (what Amazon consider a "qualifying purchase" in their terms).
What Does Amazon Shopping Cart Consist Of?
It consists of the following extensions:-
- AmazonWS content plugin - handles embedding the product information into your Joomla content;
- AmazonWS component - provides extra views, handles the shopping cart functions;
- Amazon Shopping Cart module - provides a "mini-cart" module, allowing customers to see the current contents of their cart
- Amazon Product Search module - allows customers to search for products and see the results on your site
- Amazon Shopping Cart user plugin - handles saving carts for logged in users
- AWS Product editor plugin - provides a Joomla editor button that allows you to search for and select products directly when editing an article, and will automatically insert the code for you into your article
- Amazon Country Selector module - for multi-country sites
- Amazon Similar plugin and module - provide the ability to display similar products to the ones currently being viewed
These extensions are supplied as a single package, which you upload and install to your Joomla site in the normal way.
What If I Just Want the Content Plugin?
The AmazonWS content plugin will continue to work as a stand-alone plugin, and will continue to be available to purchase as a single plugin. What's more, if you change your mind and later decide that you want the complete Amazon Shopping Cart package, we will refund the cost of the content plugin if you have purchased it from us within the previous three months, so that you will never pay more than the cost of the complete package. You will need to buy the package first, then request the refund, supplying proof of your original purchase of the plugin from us (usually your order number will be sufficient).
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Virtuemart is a popular open source e-commerce extension for the Joomla! content management system. We have a number of extensions written explicitly for Virtuemart that will enhance your store:-
- VM2 Product Snapshot allows you to embed Virtuemart product information in Joomla content articles. As a content plugin it is compatible with the Joomla core content component as well as extension that support content plugins, such as K2.
- HTML5 Slideshow for Virtuemart 2 displays your product images in an attractive HTML5 slideshow. It is compatible with all modern browsers including mobile devices and will display a simplified version in older browsers such as IE7. It is a great way to show off your products without using Flash.
- Virtuemart Featured Product Grid is an alternative to the Virtuemart featured products module. It can be used to show featured products, top ten products, recent products, and random products from some or all categories. The module is particularly useful when you want to display additional images for your products, as these are shown in a scroller.
- VM ModController Pro This module allows you to control the display of other Joomla modules on Virtuemart pages. It allows you to assign modules to Virtuemart pages (including specific product details flypages or category browse pages), categories, and shopper groups.
- GoogleBaseXML This component for the Joomla Content Management System generates a product data feed for your Virtuemart store in XML format. It is specifically designed to be compatible with the format required by Google shopping. The product listing can be manually uploaded, or submitted as an URL to Google Merchant Center for scheduled upload
You can view examples of these extensions in our Virtuemart Extensions Demo Store.
Below: A screenshot of our HTML5 slideshow for Virtuemart
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Google offers a variety of online facilities in addition to its general search functions. If you are selling products online, one facility that you should definitely be be aware of is the Google Merchant Center. This is a tool which allows you to upload your product listings to be used in Google Product Search, Google Product Ads, and Google Commerce Search. So what are these, and why might you want to use them?
Google Product Search
Google Product Search is a service designed to helper users locate products online, currently available for the following countries: USA, UK, France, Germany and Japan. Listing is free to merchants, you just need to upload the product information to Google. Shoppers can access by clicking on the 'Shopping' link on Google's front page, it is the e-commerce equivalent of Google's website search results. Since the only cost is the time it takes to submit your products, there is little downside to using this service, and a strong reason to do so, since it provide an additional way for potential customers to find your products.
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Our featured items range of modules are designed to give you the flexibility that you need in displaying Joomla articles.
They allow you to display selected Joomla articles in a variety of formats, including tab panes, accordions, carousels and slideshows. The modules are designed to allow you the greatest possible flexibility in the way you select your Joomla articles, either selecting from one or more categories or sections, or displaying your chosen list of articles. These articles can be displayed in a variety of orderings, and you can choose the exact amount of text to display, ranging from a short extract to the entire article text. You also control whether or not to display a thumbnail, and the thumbnail size.
The modules also have a number of other useful features, including the ability to dynamically resize and cache images, and to trigger content plugins. As well as displaying content from the Joomla Core Content component, the modules can display articles from K2, and we plan to support additional CCKs in the future.
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It is often the case that as web developers we need to add some extra coding that will deal with the quirks of particular web browsers . Using Joomla we can take advantage of Joomla's built in browser detection.
Browser detection is handled through the JBrowser class. The is located in Joomla's class library, in the environment subpackage. In order to use it you will first need to import it:-
jimport('joomla.environment.browser');
Then you need to get an instance of the browser object
$browser = &JBrowser::getInstance();
You can then find information about the web browser being used through examing the properties of this object, which are accessed through the appropriate 'get' method. The methods include:-
- getPlatform: returns the browser platform ('win','mac' or 'unix');
- getBrowser: returns the browser type ('opera','palm','msie', 'amaya', 'fresco', 'avantgo', 'konqueror', 'mozilla', 'lynx', 'links', 'hotjava', 'up','xiino', 'palmscape', 'nokia', 'ericsson', 'wap', 'imode', 'blackberry', 'motorola', 'mml');
- getMajor: returns the major version number;
- getMinor: returns the minor version number.
To give an example, a very common application is that you wish to load a separate stylesheet for users of Internet Explorer 6, to deal with its annoying quirks.
Example
jimport('joomla.environment.browser');
$doc =& JFactory::getDocument();
$browser = &JBrowser::getInstance();
$browserType = $browser->getBrowser();
$browserVersion = $browser->getMajor();
if(($browserType == 'msie') && ($browserVersion < 7))
{
$doc->addStyleSheet( 'css/ie6.css' );
}
If there is a particular quirk that you wish to deal with, such as lack of support for alpha transparency in png images (a common complaint with IE6), you can use the getQuirks() method:-
If($browser->getQuirks('png_transparency'))
{
$doc->addScript( 'js/pngfix.js' );
}
Other useful methods are:-
- isRobot(): returns true if the user agent is in fact a robot;
- isSSLConnection(): returns true if the connection is SSL.
- hasFeature('feature'): returns true if the browser supports the feature 'feature', which can include among others ('iframes', 'frames', 'javascript','java', 'images', 'dom, 'svg'')
Limitations
The browser object uses the reported user agent to detect this information, this information is under the control of the client so there is no guarantee that it is true. In particular you need to be careful using the hasFeature() method. For example the reported value for hasFeature('javascript') does not take account of the fact that users can choose to disable scripting on a browser that will support javascript.
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